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SHAKESPEARE AND THE MODERN 
STAGE 



SHAKESPEARE AND 
THE MODERN STAGE 

WITH OTHER ESSAYS 



BY SIDNEY LEE 

AUTHOB OF "great ENGLISHMEN OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTOBY," 
"a UFB of WILLIAM 8HAKESPEABE," ETC. 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1906 



'^ 



o>- 






LIBRARY or CONGRESS 

Twe Copies Received 

on 27 1906 

osrypfH 

CLASS >4 XXc, No. 



^kaktipMihMi 



C!OPYBIGHT, 1906, BY 

CHARLES SCKIBNEE'S SONS 



Published, October, 1906 



TROW DIRECTORY 

PaiNTlNG AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 

NEW YORK 



^^f 



PREFACE 

The eleven papers which are collected here were 
written between 1899 and 1905. With the excep- 
tion of one, entitled ''Aspects of Shakespeare's Phil- 
osophy," which is now printed for the first time, 
all were pubhshed in periodicals in the course of 
those six years. The articles treat of varied aspects 
of Shakespearean drama, its influences and tradi- 
tions, but I think that all may be credited with 
sufficient unity of intention to warrant their com- 
bination in a single volume. Their main endeavour 
is to survey Shakespearean drama in relation to 
modern Ufe, and to illustrate its living force in 
current affairs. Even in the papers which embody 
researches in sixteenth- or seventeenth-century dra- 
matic history, I have sought to keep in view the 
bearings of the past on the present. A large portion 
of the book discusses, as its title indicates, methods 
of representing Shakespeare on the modem stage. 
The attempt is there made to define, in the light of 
experience, the conditions which are best calculated 
to conserve or increase Shakespeare's genuine vitahty 
in the theatre of our own day. 

In revising the work for the press, I have deemed 
it advisable to submit the papers to a somewhat 
rigorous verbal revision. Errors have been corrected, 



viii PREFACE 

chronological ambiguities due to lapse of time have 
been removed, passages have been excised in order 
to avoid repetition, and reference to ephemeral 
events which deserve no permanent chronicle have 
been omitted. But, substantially, the articles retain 
the shape in which they were originally penned. 
The point of view has undergone no modification. 
In the essays dealing with the theatres of our own 
time, I have purposely refrained from expanding or 
altering argument or illustration by citing Shake- 
spearean performances or other theatrical enter- 
prises which have come to birth since the papers were 
first written. In the last year or two there have 
been several Shakespearean revivals of notable in- 
terest, and some new histrionic triumphs have been 
won. Within the same period, too, at least half a 
dozen new plays of serious literary aim have gained 
the approval of contemporary critics. These features 
of current dramatic history are welcome to play- 
goers of literary tastes; but I have attempted no 
survey of them, because signs are lacking that any 
essential change has been wrought by them in the 
general theatrical situation. My aim is to deal with 
dominant principles which underlie the past and 
present situation, rather than with particular episodes 
or personaHties, the real value of which the future 
has yet to determine. 

My best thanks are due to my friend Sir James 
Knowles, the proprietor and editor of The Nineteenth 
Century and After, for permission to reproduce the 
four articles, entitled respectively, ''Shakespeare and 
the Modem Stage,'' ''Shakespeare in Oral Tradition," 
"Shakespeare in France," and "The Commemora- 
tion of Shakespeare in London." To Messrs Smith, 



PREFACE ix 

Elder & Co., I am indebted for permission to print 
here the articles on ''Mr Benson and Shakespearean 
Drama," and ''Shakespeare and Patriotism," both 
of which originally appeared in The Cornhill Maga- 
zine. The paper on "Pepys and Shakespeare" was 
first printed in the Fortnightly Review; that on 
"Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Playgoer" in 
"An English Miscellany, presented to Dr Fumivall 
in honour of his seventy-fifth birthday" (1901); that 
on "The Municipal Theatre" in the New Liberal 
Review; and that on "A Peril of Shakespearean 
Research" in The Author. The proprietors of these 
pubHcations have courteously given me permission 
to include the articles in this volume. The essay on 
"Aspects of Shakespeare's Philosophy" was pre- 
pared for the purposes of a popular lecture, and has 
not been in type before. 

In a note at the foot of the opening page of each 
essay, I mention the date when it was originally 
pubHshed. An analytical list of contents and an 
index will, I hope, increase any utility which may 
attach to the volume. 

SIDNEY LEE. 

Ui October, 1906. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Preface vii 



Shakespeare and the Modern Stage 

I. The Perils of the Spectacular Method of Production 1 

II. The Need for Simplifying Scenic Appliances . . 4 
III. Consequences of Simplification. The Attitude of the 

Shakespearean Student 7 

' IV. The Pecuniary Experiences of Charles Kean and 

Sir Henry Irving 9 

V. The Experiment of Samuel Phelps . . . . 11 

VI. The Rightful Supremacy of the Actor . . . 12 

VII. The Example of the French and German Stage . 16 

VIII. Shakespeare's Reliance on the " Imaginary Forces " ^ 

of the Audience nSy 

IX. The Patriotic Argument for the Production of 
Shakespeare's Plays constantly and in their 

variety on the English Stage .... 23 

II 

Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Playgoer , 

I. An Imaginary Discovery of Shakespeare's Journal . 25 
II. Shakespeare in the Role of the Ghost on the First 

Production of Hamlet in l602 . . . . 27 

III. Shakespeare's Popularity in the Elizabethan Theatre 29 



Xll 



CONTENTS 



Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Playgoer — continued 

FAG£ 

IV. At Court in 1594 31 

V. The Theatre an Innovation in Elizabethan England 36 
VI. Elizabethan Methods of Production . . . . 38 
VII. The Contrast between the Elizabethan and the Mod- 
ern Methods 43 

VIII. The Fitness of the Audience an Essential Element 

in the Success of Shakespeare on the Stage . . 46 

III 

Shakespeare in Oral Tradition 
I. The Reception of the News of Shakespeare's Death 49 
II. The Evolution in England of Formal Biography , 51 
III. Oral Tradition concerning Shakespeare in Theatri- 
cal Circles 57 

IV. The Testimonies of Seventeenth-century Actors . 6l 
V. Sir William D'Avenant's Devotion to Shakespeare's 

Memory 69 

VI. Early Oral Tradition at Stratford-on-Avon . . 73 
VII. Shakespeare's Fame among Seventeenth-century 

Scholars and Statesmen 78 

VIII. Nicholas Rowe's Place among Shakespeare's Biog- 
raphers. The Present State of Knowledge re- 
specting Shakespeare's Life 79 

IV 
Pepvs and Shakespeare 
I. Pepys the Microcosm of the Average Playgoer . 82 
II. The London Theatres of Pepys 's Diary ... 85 

III. Pepys's Enthusiasm for the Later Elizabethan 

Drama 90 

IV. Pepys's Criticism of Shakespeare. His Admiration 

of Betterton in Shakespearean Roles ... 93 
V. The Garbled Versions of Shakespeare on the Stage 

of the Restoration 102 

VI. The Saving Grace of the Restoration Theatre. 
Betterton's Masterly Interpretation of Shake- 
speare 109 



/ 



CONTENTS xiii 



Mr Benson and Shakespearean Drama 

PACK 

I. A Return to the Ancient Ways Ill 

II. The Advantages of a Constant Change of Pro- 
gramme. The Opportunities offered Actors by 
Shakespeare's Minor Characters. John of Gaunt 113 
III. The Benefit of Performing the Play of Hamlet with- 
out Abbreviation Il6 

IV. Mr Benson as a Trainer of Actors. The Succession 

to Phelps 119 

VI 

The Municipal Theatre 

I. The True Aim of the Municipal Theatre . . . 122 
II. Private Theatrical Enterprise and Literary Drama. 
The Advantages and Disadvantages of the Actor- 
Manager System. The Control of the Capitalist . 123 

III. Possibilities of the Artistic Improvement of Theat- 

rical Organisation in England 127 

IV. Indications of a Demand for a Municipal Theatre . 129 
V. The Teaching of Foreign Experience. The Exam- 
ple of Vienna 134 

VI. The Conditions of Success in England . , , 138 

VII 

Aspects of Shakespeare's Philosophy 

I. The Conflicting Attitudes of Bacon and Shakespeare . 

to Formal Philosophy ' 142 

II. Shakespeare's " Natural " Philosophy. Concealment 

of his Personality in his Plays . . . . 14.8 

III. His lofty Conception of Public Virtue. Frequency 

of his Denunciation of Royal " Ceremony" . . 152 

IV. The Duty of Obedience to Authority . . . . l6l 
V. The Moral Atmosphere of Shakespearean Drama . l6l< 



xiv CONTENTS 

Aspects of Shakespeare's Philosophy — continued 

PAGE 

VI. Shakespeare's Insistence on the Freedom of the 

Will 166 

VII. His Humour and Optimism 168 



VIII 

Shakespeare and Patriotism 

I. The Natural Instinct of Patriotism. Dangers of 

Excess and Defect 170 

II. An Attempt to Co-ordinate Shakespeare's Detached 
Illustrations of the Working of Patriotic Senti- 
ment. His Ridicule of Bellicose Ecstasy. Corio- 
lanus illustrates the Danger of Disavowing Patri- 
otism 172 

III. Criticism of One's Fellow-countrymen Consistent 

with Patriotism. Shakespeare on the Political 
History of England. The Country's Dependence 
on the Command of the Sea. The Respect due 
to a Nation's Traditions and Experience . . 179 

IV. Shakespeare's Exposure of Social Foibles and Errors 184 

V. Relevance of Shakespeare's Doctrine of Patriotism 

to Current Affairs 187 



IX 

A Peril of Shakespearean Research 

I. An Alleged Meeting of Peele, Ben Jonson, AUeyn, 

and Shakespeare at " The Globe " in l600 . . 188 

II. The Fabrication by George Steevens in 1763 of a 

Letter signed " G. Peel " 190 

III. Popular Acceptance of the Forgery. Its Unchal- 
lenged Circulation through the Eighteenth, Nine- 
teenth, and Twentieth Centuries . . . . 194^ 



CONTENTS XV 



Shakespeare in France 

PAGE 

I. Amicable Literary Relations between France and 
England from the Fourteenth to the Present 

Century 198 

II.- M. Jusserand on Shakespeare in France. French 
Knowledge of English Literature in Shake- 
• "speare's day. Shakespeare in Eighteenth-cen- 
tury France. Eulogies of Victor Hugo and 

Dumas pere 201 

III. French Misapprehensions of Shakespeare's Tragic 

Conceptions. Causes of the Misunderstanding . 206 
IV. Charles Nodier's Sympathetic Tribute. The Rarity 

of his Pensees de Shakespeare, 1801 . . . 211 



XI 

The Commemoration of Shakespeare in London 

I. Early Proposals for a National Memorial of Shake- 
speare in London 214 

II. The Cenotaph in Westminster Abbey . . . 215 

III. The Failure of the Nineteenth-century Schemes . 217 

IV. The National Memorial at Stratford-on-Avon . . 219 
V. Shakespeare's Association with London . . . 226 

VI. The Value of a London Memorial as a Symbol of 

his Universal Influence 228 

VII. The Real Significance of Milton's Warning against 

a Monumental Commemoration of Shakespeare . 230 
VIII. The Undesirability of making the Memorial serve 

Utilitarian Purposes 235 

IX. The Present State of the Plastic Art. The Im- 
perative Need of securing a Supreme Work of 
Sculpture 236 

Index ....« 245 



SHAKESPEARE AND THE 
MODERN STAGE 

I 

SHAKESPEARE AND THE MODERN STAGE i 

I 

Without 'Hhe living comment and interpretation of 
the theatre," Shakespeare's work is, for the rank and 
file of mankind, ''a deep well without a wheel or a 
windlass." It is true that the whole of the spiritual 
treasures which Shakespeare's dramas hoard will 
never be disclosed to the mere playgoer, but "a. 
large, a very large, proportion of that indefinite all" 
may be revealed to him on the stage, and, if he be no 
patient reader, will be revealed to him nowhere else. 
There are earnest students of Shakespeare who 
scorn the theatre and arrogate to themselves in the 
library, often with some justification, a greater 
capacity for apprehending and appreciating Shake- 
speare than is at the command of the ordinary play- 
goer or actor. But let Sir Oracle of the study, how- 
ever full and deep be his knowledge, ''use all gently." 
Let him bear in mind that his vision also has its 
limitations, and that student, actor, and spectator 

^ This paper was first printed in The Nineteenth Century, 
January, 1900. 



2 SHAKESPEARE AND THE MODERN STAGE 

of Shakespeare's plays are all alike exploring a 
measureless region of philosophy and poetry, ^' round 
which no comprehension has yet drawn the Une of 
circumspection, so as to say to itself '1 have seen 
the whole. ' " Actor and student may look at Shake- 
speare's text from different points of view ; but there 
is always as reasonable a chance that the efficient 
actor may disclose the full significance of some 
speech or scene which escapes the efficient student, 
as that the student may supply the actor's lack of 
insight. 

It is, indeed, comparatively easy for a student 
of literature to support the proposition that Shake- 
speare can be, and ought to be, represented on the 
stage. But it is difficult to define the ways and 
means of securing practical observance of the pre- 
cept. For some years there has been a widening 
divergence of view respecting methods of Shake- 
spearean production. Those who defend in theory 
the adaptability of Shakespeare to the stage are 
at variance with the leading managers, who alone 
possess the power of conferring on the Shakespearean 
drama theatrical interpretation. In the most in- 
fluential circles of the theatrical profession it has 
become a commonplace to assert that Shakespearean 
drama cannot be successfully produced, cannot be 
rendered tolerable to any substantial section of 
the playgoing public, without a plethora of scenic 
spectacle and gorgeous costume, much of which 
the student regards as superfluous and inappropri- 
ate. An accepted tradition of the modern stage 
ordains that every revival of a Shakespearean play 
at a leading theatre shall base some part of its claim 
to pubHc favour on its spectacular magnificence. 



PERILS OF SPECTACLE 3 

The dramatic interest of Shakespearean drama is, 
in fact, deemed by the manager to be inadequate 
to satisfy the necessary commercial purposes of the 
theatre. The average purveyor of pubUc entertain- 
ment reckons Shakespeare's plays among tasteless 
and colourless conmiodities, which only become 
marketable when they are reinforced by the inde- 
pendent arts of music and painting. Shakespeare's 
words must be spoken to musical accompaniments 
specially prepared for the occasion. Pictorial tab- 
leaux, even though they suggest topics without 
relevance to the development of the plot, have at 
times to be interpolated in order to keep the atten- 
tion of the audience sufficiently ahve. 

One deduction to be drawn from this position 
of affairs is irrefutable. Spectacular embellishments 
are so costly that, according to the system now in 
vogue, the performance of a play of Shakespeare 
involves heavy financial risks. It is equally plain 
that, unless the views of theatrical managers under- 
go revolution, these risks are Hkely to become greater 
rather than smaller. The natural result is that in 
London, the city which sets the example to most 
English-speaking communities, Shakespearean re- 
vivals are comparatively rare; they take place at 
uncertain intervals, and only those plays are viewed 
with favour by the London manager which lend 
themselves in his opinion to more or less ostentatious 
spectacle, and to the interpolation of music and 
dancing. 

It is ungrateful to criticise adversely any work 
the production of which entails the expenditure of 
much thought and money. More especially is it dis- 
tasteful when the immediate outcome is, as in the 



4 SHAKESPEARE AND THE MODERN STAGE 

case of many Shakespearean revivals at the gr6at 
West-end theatres of London, the giving of pleasure 
to large sections of the community. That is in itself 
a worthy object. But it is open to doubt whether, 
from the sensible Hterary point of view, the man- 
agerial activity be well conceived or to the public 
advantage. It is hard to ignore a fundamental 
flaw in the manager's central position. The pleasure 
which recent Shakespearean revivals offer the spec- 
tator reaches him mainly through the eye. That 
is the manager's avowed intention. Yet no one 
would seriously deny that the Shakespearean drama 
appeals, both primarily and ultimately, to the head 
and to the heart. Whoever seeks, therefore, by 
the production of Shakespearean drama chiefly to 
please the spectator's eye shows scant respect both 
for the dramatist and for the spectator, however 
unwittingly he tends to misrepresent the one and 
to mislead the other in a particular of first-rate 
importance. Indeed, excess in scenic display does 
worse than restrict opportunities of witnessing 
Shakespeare's plays on the stage in London and 
other large cities of England and America. It is 
to be feared that such excess either weakens or dis- 
torts the just and proper influence of Shakespeare's 
work. If these imputations can be sustained, then 
it follows that the increased and increasing expense 
which is involved in the production of Shakespeare's 
plays ought on grounds of public poHcy to be 
diminished. 

II 

Every stage representation of a play requires 
sufficient scenery and costume to produce in the 



THE PURPOSE OF SCENERY 5 

audience that illusion of environment which the 
text invites. Without so much scenery or costume 
the words fail to get home to the audience. In 
comedies dealing with concrete conditions of modern 
society, the stage presentation necessarily relies to 
a very large extent for its success on the realism of 
the scenic appHances. In plays which, deahng with 
the universal and less familiar conditions of life, 
appeal to the highest faculties of thought and imagi- 
nation, the pursuit of realism in the scenery tends 
to destroy the full significance of the illusion which 
it ought to enforce. In the case of plays straight- 
forwardly treating of contemporary affairs, the en- 
\dronment which it is sought to reproduce is familiar 
and easy of imitation. In the case of drama, which 
involves larger spheres of fancy and feeling, the 
environment is unfamiliar and admits of no realistic 
imitation. The wall-paper and furniture of Mrs. 
So-and-so's drawing-room in Belgravia or Derbyshire 
can be transferred bodily to the stage. Prospero's 
deserted island does not admit of the like translation. 
Effective suggestion of the scene of The Tempest 
is all that can be reasonably attempted or desired. 
Plays which are wrought of purest imaginative tex- 
ture call solely for a scenic setting which should 
convey effective suggestion. The machinery to be 
employed for the purpose of effective suggestion 
should be simple and unobtrusive. If it be complex 
and obtrusive, it defeats 'Hhe purpose of playing" 
by exaggerating for the spectator the inevitable 
interval between the visionary and indeterminate 
limits of the scene which the poet imagines and the 
cramped and narrow bounds which the stage renders 
practicable. That perilous interval can only be ef- 



6 SHAKESPEARE AND THE MODERN STAGE 

fectually bridged by scenic art, which is applied 
with an apt judgment and a Hght hand. Anything 
that aims at doing more than satisfy the condition 
essential to the effective suggestion of the scenic 
environment of Shakespearean drama is, from the 
literary and logical points of view, '' wasteful and 
ridiculous excess." ^ 

But it is not only a simplification of scenic ap- 
pliances that is needed. Other external incidents 
of production require revision. Spectacular methods 
of production entail the employment of armies of 
silent supernumeraries to whom are allotted func- 
tions wholly ornamental and mostly impertinent. 
Here, too, reduction is desirable in the interest of 
the true significance of drama. No valid reason 
can be adduced why persons should appear on the 
stage who are not precisely indicated by the text of 
the play or by the authentic stage directions. When 
Caesar is buried, it is essential to produce in the 
audience the illusion that a crowd of Roman citizens 
is taking part in the ceremony. But quality comes 
here before quantity. The fewer the number of 
supernumeraries by whom the needful illusion is 
effected, the greater the merit of the performance, 
the more convincing the testimony borne to the skill 
of the stage-manager. Again, no processions of 
psalm-singing priests and monks contribute to the 
essential illusion in the historical plays. Nor does 
the text of The Merchant of Venice demand any 

^ A minor practical objection^ from the dramatic point of view, 
to realistic scenery is the long pause its setting on the stage often 
renders inevitable between the scenes. Intervals of the kind, 
which always tend to blunt the dramatic point of the play, 
especially in the case of tragic masterpieces, should obviously be 
as brief as possible. 



EFFECTS OF SIMPLIFICATION 7 

assembly of Venetian townsfolk, however pic- 
turesquely attired, sporting or chaffering with one 
another on the Rialto, when Shylock enters to 
ponder Antonio's request for a loan. An inter- 
polated tableau is indefensible, and 'Hhough it 
make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the 
judicious grieve." In Antony and Cleopatra the 
pageant of Cleopatra's voyage up the river Cydnus 
to meet her lover Antony should have no existence 
outside the gorgeous description given of it by 
Enobarbus. 

Ill 

What would be the practical effects of a stern 
resolve on the part of theatrical managers to sim- 
plify the scenic appliances and to reduce the super- 
numerary staff when they are producing Shake- 
spearean drama? The replies will be in various 
keys. One result of simplification is obvious. There 
would be so much more money in the manager's 
pocket after he had paid the expenses of produc- 
tion. If his outlay were smaller, the sum that he 
expended in the production of one play of Shake- 
speare on the current over-elaborate scale would 
cover the production of two or three pieces mounted 
with simpHcity and with a strict adherence to the 
requirements of the text. In such an event, the 
manager would be satisfied with a shorter run for 
each play. 

On the other hand, supporters of the existing 
system allege that no public, which is worth the 
counting, would interest itself in Shakespeare's 
plays, if they were robbed of scenic upholstery and 



8 SHAKESPEARE AND THE MODERN STAGE 

spectacular display. This estimate rests on in- 
secure foundations. That section of the London 
public, which is genuinely interested in Shake- 
spearean drama for its own sake, is prone to distrust 
the modern theatrical manager, and as things are, 
for the most part avoids the theatre altogether. 
The student stays at home to read Shakespeare at 
his fire-side. 

It may be admitted that the public to which 
Shakespeare in his purity makes appeal is not very 
large. It is clearly not large enough to command 
continuous runs of plays for months, or even weeks. 
But therein lies no cause for depression. Long runs 
of a single play of Shakespeare bring more evil than 
good in their train. They develop in even the 
most efficient acting a soulless mechanism. The 
Hterary beauty of the text is obliterated by repeti- 
tion from the actors' minds. Unostentatious mount- 
ing of the Shakespearean plays, however efficient be 
the acting with which it is associated, may always 
fail to ''please the million"; it may be ''caviare to 
the general." Nevertheless, the sagacious mana- 
ger, who, by virtue of comparatively inexpensive 
settings and in alliance with a well-chosen com- 
pany of efficient actors and actresses, is able at 
short intervals to produce a succession of Shake- 
speare's plays, may reasonably expect to attract a 
small but steady and sufficient support from the 
intelHgent section of London playgoers, and from 
the home-reading students of Shakespeare, who 
are not at present playgoers at all. 



EXPERIENCE OF KEAN AND IRVING 9 

IV 

The practical manager, who naturally seeks 
pecuniary profit from his ventures, insists that 
these suggestions are counsels of perfection and 
these anticipations wild and fantastic dreams. 
His last word is that by spectacular method Shake- 
speare can alone be made to ''pay" in the theatre. 
But are we here on perfectly secure ground? Has 
the commercial success attending the spectacular 
production of Shakespeare been invariably so con- 
spicuous as to put summarily out of court, on the 
purely commercial ground, the method of simplicity? 
The pecuniary results are public knowledge in the 
case of the two most strenuous and prolonged 
endeavours to give Shakespeare the splendours of 
spectacle which have yet been completed on the 
London stage. What is the message of these two 
efforts in mere pecuniary terms? 

Charles Kean may be regarded as the founder 
of the modem spectacular system, though it had 
some precedents and has been developed since his 
day. Charles Kean, between 1851 and 1859, per- 
sistently endeavoured by prodigal and brilliant dis- 
play to make the production of Shakespeare an 
enterprise of profit at the Princess's Theatre, Lon- 
don. The scheme proved pecuniarily disastrous. 

Subsequently Kean's mantle was assumed by 
the late Sir Henry Irving, the greatest of recent 
actors and stage-managers, who in many regards 
conferred incalculable benefits on the theatre-going 
public and on the theatrical profession. Through- 
out the last quarter of the last century, Irving gave 
the spectacular and scenic system in the produc- 
tion of Shakespeare every advantage that it could 



10 SHAKESPEARE AND THE MODERN STAGE 

derive from munificent expenditure and the co- 
operation of highly endowed artists. He could 
justly claim a finer artistic sentiment and a higher 
histrionic capacity than Charles Kean possessed. 
Yet Irving announced not long before his death 
that he lost on his Shakespearean productions a 
hundred thousand pounds. Sir Henry added: 

The enormous cost of a Shakespearean produc- 
tion on the Hberal and elaborate scale which the 
public is now accustomed to expect makes it almost 
impossible for any manager — I don't care who it is 
— to pursue a continuous policy of Shakespeare for 
many years with any hope of profit in the long run. 

In face of this authoritative pronouncement, it 
must be conceded that the spectacular system has 
been given, within recent memory, every chance of 
succeeding, and, as far as recorded testimony is 
available, has been, from the commercial point of 
view, a failure. 

Meanwhile, during and since the period when 
Sir Henry Irving filled the supreme place among 
producers of Shakespeare on the stage, the simple 
method of Shakespearean production has been 
given no serious chance. The anticipation of its 
pecuniary failure has not been put in satisfactory 
conditions to any practical test. The last time that 
it was put to a sound practical test it did not fail. 
While Irving was a boy, Phelps at Sadler's Wells 
Theatre gave, in well-considered conditions, the 
simple method a trial. Phelps's playhouse was situ- 
ated in the unfashionable neighbourhood of Islington. 
But the prophets of evil, who were no greater stran- 
gers to Phelps's generation than they are to our 
own, were themselves confuted by his experience. 



PHELPS AT SADLER'S WELLS 11 

V 

On the 27th of May, 1844, Phelps, a most intel- 
ligent actor and a serious student of Shakespeare, 
opened the long-disused Sadler's Wells Theatre 
in partnership with Mrs. Warner, a capable actress, 
whose rendering of Imogen went near perfection. 
Their design was inspired by 'Hhe hope," they wrote 
in an unassuming address, '^of eventually render- 
ing Sadler's Wells what a theatre ought to be, a 
place for justly representing the works of our great 
dramatic poets." This hope they went far to real- 
ise. The first play that they produced was Macbeth. 

Phelps continued to control Sadler's Wells Thea- 
tre for more than eighteen years. During that 
period he produced, together with many other 
English plays of classical repute, no fewer than 
thirty-one of the thirty-seven great dramas which 
came from Shakespeare's pen. In his first season, 
besides Macbeth he set forth Hamlet, King John, 
Henry VIIL, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and 
Richard III. To these he added in the course of 
his second season Julius Ccesar, King Lear, and The 
Winter's Tale. Henry IV., part I., Measure for 
Measure, Romeo and Juliet, and The Tempest fol- 
lowed in his third season ; As You Like It, Cymbeline, 
The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Twelfth Night, 
in his fourth. Each succeeding season saw further 
additions to the Shakespearean repertory, until 
only six Shakespearean dramas were left unrepre- 
sented, viz. — Richard 11. , the three parts of Henry 
VI., Troilus and Cressida, and Titus Andronicus. 
Of these, one alone, Richard II., is really actable. 

The leading principles, to which Phelps strictly 



12 SHAKESPEARE AND THE MODERN STAGE 

adhered throughout his career of management, call 
for most careful consideration. He gathered round 
him a company of actors and actresses, whom he 
zealously trained to interpret Shakespeare's language. 
He accustomed his colleagues to act harmoniously 
together, and to sacrifice to the welfare of the whole 
enterprise pretensions to individual prominence. 
No long continuous run of any one piece was per- 
mitted by the rules of the playhouse. The pro- 
gramme was constantly changed. The scenic ap- 
pliances were simple, adequate, and inexpensive. 
The supernumerary staff was restricted to the 
smallest practicable number. The general expenses 
were consequently kept within narrow limits. For 
every thousand pounds that Charles Kean laid out 
at the Princess's Theatre on scenery and other ex- 
penses of production, Phelps in his most ornate re- 
vivals spent less than a fourth of that sum. For 
the pounds spent by managers on more recent 
revivals, Phelps would have spent only as many 
shillings. In the result, Phelps reaped from the 
profits of his efforts a handsome unencumbered in- 
come. During the same period Charles Kean grew 
more and more deeply involved in oppressive debt, 
and at a later date Sir Henry Irving made over to 
the public a hundred thousand pounds above his 
receipts. 

VI 

Why, then, should not Phelps's encouraging 
experiment be made again ? ^ 

^ It is just to notice, among endeavours of the late years of the 
past century, to which I confine my remarks here, the efforts to 
produce Shakespearean drama worthily which were made by 



THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE ACTOR 13 

Before anyone may commit himself to an affirm- 
ative reply, it is needful for him to realise fully the 
precise demands which a system like that of Phelps 
makes, when rightly interpreted, on the character, 
ability, and energy of the actors and actresses. If 
scenery in Shakespearean productions be relegated 
to its proper place in the background of the stage, 
it is necessary that the acting, from top to bottom 
of the cast, shall be more efficient and better har- 
monised than that which is commonly associated 
with spectacular representations. The simple meth- 
od of producing Shakespeare focusses the interest 
of the audience on the actor and actress; it gives 
them a dignity and importance which are unknown 
to the complex method. Under the latter system, 
the attention of the spectator is largely absorbed by 
the triumphs of the scene-painter and machinist, 
of the costumier and the musicians. The actor 
and actress often elude notice altogether. 

Charles Alexander Calvert at the Prince's Theatre, Manchester, 
between 1864) and 1874. Calvert, who was a warm admirer of 
Phelps, attempted to blend Phelps's method with Charles Kean's, 
and bestowed great scenic elaboration on the production of at least 
eight plays of Shakespeare. Financially the speculation saw 
every vicissitude, and Calvert's experience may be quoted in sup- 
port of the view that a return to Phelps's method is financially 
safer than a return to Charles Kean's. More recently the Eliza- 
bethan Stage Society endeavoured to produce, with a simplicity 
which erred on the side of severity, many plays of Shakespeare 
and other literary dramas. No scenery was employed, and the 
performers were dressed in Elizabethan costume. The Society's 
work was done privately, and did not invite any genuine test of 
publicity. The representation by the Society on November 11, 
1 899, in the Lecture Theatre at Burlington House, of Richard II., 
in which Mr Granville Barker played the King with great charm 
and judgment, showed the fascination that a competent rendering 
of Shakespeare's text exerts, even in the total absence of scenery, 
over a large audience of suitable temper. 



14 SHAKESPEARE AND THE MODERN STAGE 

Macready, whose theatrical career was anterior 
to the modem spectacular period of Shakespearean 
representation, has left on record a dehberate opinion 
of Charles Kean's elaborate methods at the Princess's 
Theatre in their relation to drama and the histrionic 
art. Macready's verdict has an universal applica- 
tion. '^The production of the Shakespearean plays 
at the Princess's Theatre," the great actor wrote to 
Lady Pollock on the 1st of May, 1859, rendered the 
spoken text '^more like a running commentary on 
the spectacles exhibited than the scenic arrange- 
ments an illustration of the text." No criticism 
could define more convincingly the humiliation to 
which the author's words are exposed by spectacle, 
or, what is more pertinent to the immediate argu- 
ment, the evil which is worked by spectacle on the 
actor. 

Acting can be, and commonly tends to be, the 
most mechanical of physical exercises. The actor 
is often a mere automaton who repeats night after 
night the same unimpressive trick of voice, eye, 
and gesture. His defects of understanding may be 
comparatively unobtrusive in a spectacular display, 
where he is liable to escape censure by escaping 
observation, or at best to be regarded as a show- 
man. Furthermore, the long runs which scenic ex- 
cess brings in its train accentuate the mechanical 
actor's imperfections and diminish his opportunities 
of remedying them. On the other hand, acting can 
rise in opposite conditions into the noblest of the 
arts. The great actor relies for genuine success on 
no mere gesticulatory mechanism. Imaginative in- 
sight, passion, the gift of oratory, grace and dignity 
of movement and bearing, perfect command of the 



THE ACTOR'S OPPORTUNITIES 15 

voice in the whole gamut of its inflections are the 
constituent qualities of true histrionic capacity. 

In no drama are these qualities more necessary, 
or are ampler opportunities offered for their use, 
than in the plays of Shakespeare. Not only in the 
leading roles of his masterpieces, but in the sub- 
ordinate parts throughout the range of his work, the 
highest abilities of the actor or actress can find some 
scope for employment. It is therefore indispen- 
sable that the standard of Shakespearean acting 
should always be maintained at the highest level, 
if Shakespearean drama is to be fitly rendered in 
the theatre. The worst of the evils, which are 
inherent in scenic excess, with its accompaniment 
of long runs, is its tendency to sanction the main- 
tenance of the level of acting at something below 
the highest. Phelps was keenly alive to this peril, 
and his best energies were devoted to training his 
actors and actresses for all the roles in the cast, 
great and small. Actors and actresses of the first 
rank on occasion filled minor parts, in order to 
heighten the efficiency of the presentation. Actors 
and actresses who have the dignity of their pro- 
fession at heart might be expected to welcome the 
revival of a system which alone guarantees their 
talent and the work of the dramatist due recogni- 
tion, even if it leave histrionic incompetence no 
hope of escape from the scorn that befits it. It is 
on the aspiration and sentiment of the acting pro- 
fession that must largely depend the final answer 
to the question whether Phelps's experiment can 
be made again with likelihood of success. 



16 SHAKESPEARE AND THE MODERN STAGE 

VII 

Foreign experience tells in favour of the 
contention that, if Shakespeare's plays are to be 
honoured on the modern stage as they deserve, 
they must be freed of the existing incubus of scenic 
machinery. French acting has always won and 
deserved admiration. There is no doubt that one 
cause of its permanently high repute is the absolute 
divorce in the French theatre of drama from spectacle. 

Moliere stands to French literature in much the 
same relation as Shakespeare stands to English 
literature. Moliere's plays are constantly acted in 
French theatres with a scenic austerity which is 
unknown to the humblest of our theatres. A French 
audience would regard it as sacrilege to convert 
a comedy of Moliere into a spectacle. The French 
people are commonly credited with a love of orna- 
ment and display to which the English people 
are assumed to be strangers, but their treatment 
of Moliere is convincing proof that their artistic 
sense is ultimately truer than our own. 

The mode of producing Shakespeare on the stage 
in Germany supplies an argument to the same effect. 
In Berlin and Vienna, and in all the chief towns of 
German-speaking Europe, Shakespeare's plays are 
produced constantly and in all their variety, for the 
most part, in conditions which are directly anti- 
thetical to those prevailing in the West-end theatres 
of London. Twenty-eight of Shakespeare's thirty- 
seven plays figure in the repertoires of the leading 
companies of German-speaking actors. 

The currently accepted method of presentation 
can be judged from the following personal experience. 



SHAKESPEARE IN VIENNA 17 

A few years ago I was in the Burg-Theater m Vienna 
on a Sunday night — the night on which the great 
working population of Vienna chiefly take their 
recreation, as in this country it is chiefly taken by 
the great working population on Saturday night. 
The Burg-Theater in Vienna is one of the largest 
theatres in the world. It is of similar dimensions to 
Drury Lane Theatre or Covent Garden Opera- 
house. On the occasion of my visit the play pro- 
duced was Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. 
The house was crowded in every part. The scenic 
arrangements were simple and imobtrusive, but 
were well calculated to suggest the Oriental atmos- 
phere of the plot. There was no music before the 
performance, or during the intervals between the 
acts, or as an accompaniment to great speeches in 
the progress of the play. There was no making 
love, nor any dying to slow music, although the 
stage directions were followed scrupulously ; the 
song '^Come, thou Monarch of the Vine,'' was sung 
to music in the drinking scene on board Pompey's 
galley, and there were the appointed flourishes of 
trumpets and drums. The acting was competent, 
though not of the highest calibre, but a satisfactory 
level was evenly maintained throughout the cast. 
There were no conspicuous deflections from the 
adequate standard. The character of whom I have 
the most distinct recollection was Enobarbus, the 
level-headed and straight-hitting critic of the action 
— a comparatively subordinate part, which was 
filled by one of the most distinguished actors of the 
Viennese stage. He fitted his part with telling 
accuracy. 

The whole piece was listened to with breathless 



18 SHAKESPEARE AND THE MODERN STAGE 

interest. It was acted practically without curtail- 
ment, and, although the performance lasted nearly 
five hours, no sign of impatience manifested itself 
at any point. This was no exceptional experience 
at the Burg-Theater. Plays of Shakespeare are 
acted there repeatedly — on an average twice a 
week — and, I am credibly informed, with identical 
results to those of which I was an eye-witness. 



VIII 

It cannot be flattering to our self-esteem that the 
Austrian people should show a greater and a wiser 
appreciation of the theatrical capacities of Shake- 
speare's masterpieces than we who are Shakespeare's 
countrymen and the most direct and rightful heirs of 
his glorious achievements. How is the disturbing 
fact to be accounted for? Is it possible that it is 
attributable to some decay in us of the imagina- 
tion — to a growing slowness on our part to ap- 
preciate works of imagination? When one reflects 
on the simple mechanical contrivances which satis- 
fied the theatrical audiences, not only of Shake- 
speare's own day, but of the eighteenth century, 
during which Shakespeare was repeatedly per- 
formed; when one compares the simplicity of scenic 
mechanism in the past with its complexity in our 
own time, one can hardly resist the conclusion that 
the imagination of the theatre-going public is no 
longer what it was of old. The play alone was 
then ''the thing." Now ''the thing," it seems, is 
something outside the play — namely, the painted 
Bcene or the costume, the music or the dance. 



ALLEGED DESIRE FOR SPECTACLE 19 

Garrick played Macbeth in an ordinary Court 
suit of his own era. The habihments proper to 
Celtic monarchs of the eleventh century were left 
to be supplied by the imagination of the spectators 
or not at all. No realistic ''effects" helped the play 
forward in Garrick' s time, yet the attention of his 
audience, the critics tell us, was never known to 
stray when he produced a great play by Shake- 
speare. In Shakespeare's day boys or men took 
the part of women, and how characters like Lady 
Macbeth and Desdemona were adequately rendered 
by youths beggars belief. But renderings in such 
conditions proved popular and satisfactory. Such 
a fact seems convincing testimony, not to the abihty 
of Elizabethan or Jacobean boys — the nature of 
boys is a pretty permanent factor in human society 
— but to the superior imaginative faculty of adult 
Elizabethan or Jacobean playgoers, in whom, as in 
Garrick's time, the needful dramatic illusion was 
far more easily evoked than it is nowadays. 

This is no exhilarating conclusion. But less 
exhilarating is the endeavour that is sometimes 
made by advocates of the system of spectacle to 
prove that Shakespeare himself would have appre- 
ciated the modern developments of the scenic art — 
nay, more, that he himself has justified them. 
This line of argument serves to confirm the sug- 
gested defect of imagination in the present genera- 
tion. The well-known chorus before the first act 
of Henry V. is the evidence which is relied upon to 
show that Shakespeare wished his plays to be, in 
journalistic dialect, ■ ''magnificently staged," and 
that he deplored the inability of his uncouth age to 
realise that wish. The lines are familiar; but it 



20 SHAKESPEARE AND THE MODERN STAGE 

is necessary to quote them at length, in fairness to 
those who judge them to be a defence of the spec- 
tacular principle in the presentation of Shake- 
spearean drama. They run : — 

O for a muse of fire^ that would ascend 

The brightest heaven of invention, 

A kingdom for a stage, princes to act. 

And monarchs to behold the swelling scene ! 

Then should the warlike Harry, like himself. 

Assume the port of Mars ; and at his heels, 

Leash'd in like hoxmds, should famine, sword and fire 

Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all. 

The flat unraised spirits that have dar'd 

On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth 

So great an object: can this cockpit hold 

The vasty fields of France? or may we cram 

Within this wooden O the very casques 

That did afi"right the air at Agincourt? 

O, pardon ! since a crooked figure may 

Attest in little place a million ; 

And let us, ciphers to this great accompt. 

On your imaginary forces work. 

Suppose within the girdle of these walls 

Are now confined two mighty monarchies. 

Whose high upreared and abutting fronts. 

The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder; 

Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts; 

Into a thousand parts divide one man. 

And make imaginary puissance: 

Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them 

Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth. 

For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings. 

Carry them here and there, jumping o'er times. 

Turning the accomplishment of many years 

Into an hour glass. 

There is, in my opinion, no strict relevance in 
these lines to the enquiry whether Shakespeare's 
work should be treated on the stage as drama or 
spectacle. Nay, I go further, and assert that, as 



ESSENTIAL LIMITATIONS OF SCENERY 21 

far as the speech touches the question at issue at 
all, it tells against the pretensions of spectacle. 

Shortly stated, Shakespeare's splendid prelude~^ 
to his play of Henry V. is a spirited appeal to his 
audience not to waste regrets on defects of stage 
machinery, but to bring to the observation of his 
piece their highest powers of imagination, whereby 
alone can full justice be done to a majestic theme. J 
The central topic of the choric speech is the essen- 
tial limitations of all scenic appliances. The dram- 
atist reminds us that the literal presentation of Hfe 
itself, in all its movement and action, lies outside 
the range of the stage, especially the movement 
and action of life in its most glorious manifestations. 
Obvious conditions of space do not allow "two 
mighty monarchies" literally to be confined within 
the walls of a theatre. Obvious conditions of time 
cannot turn 'Hhe accomplishments of many years 
into an hour glass." Shakespeare is airing no 
private grievance. He is not complaining that his 
plays were in his own day inadequately upholstered 
in the theatre, or that the "scaffold" on which they 
were produced was "unworthy" of them. The 
words have no concern with the contention that 
modern upholstery and spectacular machinery render 
Shakespeare's play a justice which was denied them 
in his lifetime. As reasonably one might affirm 
that the modern theatre has now conquered the 
ordinary conditions of time and space; that a mod- 
ern playhouse can, if the manager so will it, actually 
hold within its walls the "vasty fields of France," 
or confine "two mighty monarchies." 

A wider and quite impersonal trend of thought 
is offered for consideration by Shakespeare's majestic 



22 SHAKESPEARE AND THE MODERN STAGE 

eloquence. The dramatist bids us bear in mind 
that his Hnes do no more than suggest the things he 
would have the audience see and understand; the 
actors aid the suggestion according to their ability. 
But the crucial point of the utterance is the warning 
that the illusion of the drama can only be rendered 
complete in the theatre by the working of the 
''imaginary forces" of the spectators. It is need- 
ful for them to ''make imaginary puissance," if the 
play is to triumph. It is their "thoughts" that 
"must deck" the kings of the stage, if the dram- 
atist's meaning is to get home. The poet modestly 
underestimated the supreme force of his own im- 
aginative genius when giving these admonitions to 
his hearers. But they are warnings of universal 
application, and can never be safely ignored. 

Such an exordium as the chorus before Henry V. 
would indeed be pertinent to every stage perform- 
ance of great drama in any age or country. It 
matters not whether the spectacular machinery be 
of royal magnificence or of poverty-stricken squalor. 
Let us make the extravagant assumption that all 
the artistic genius in the world and all the treasure 
in the Bank of England were placed at the com- 
mand of the theatrical manager in order to enable 
him to produce a great play on his stage su- 
premely well from his own scenic point of view. 
Even then it would not be either superfluous or 
impertinent for the manager to adjure the audi- 
ence to piece out the "imperfections" of the 
scenery with their "thoughts" or imagination. 
The spectator's "imaginary puissance" is, practi- 
cally in every circumstance, the key-stone of the 
dramatic illusion. 



SHAKESPEARE ON SCENIC REALISM 23 

The only conditions in which Shakespeare's ad- 
juration would be superfluous or impertinent would 
accompany the presentment in the theatre of some 
circumscribed incident of life which is capable of 
so literal a rendering as to leave no room for any 
make-believe or illusion at all. The unintellectual 
playgoer, to whom Shakespeare will never really 
prove attractive in any guise, has little or no im- 
agination to exercise, and he only tolerates a per- 
formance in the theatre when little or no demand 
is made on the exercise of the imaginative faculty. 
^'The groundUngs/' said Shakespeare for all time, 
"are capable of [appreciating] nothing but inex- 
plicable dumb shows and noise." They would be 
hugely delighted nowadays with a scene in which 
two real motor cars, with genuine chauffeurs and 
passengers, raced uproariously across the stage. 
That is realism in its nakedness. That is realism 
reduced to its first principles. ReaHstic '' effects," 
however speciously beautiful they may be, invari- 
ably tend to realism of that primal type, which 
satisfies the predilections of the groundUng, and 
reduces drama to the level of the cinematograph. 

IX 

The deliberate pursuit of scenic reahsm is antag- 
onistic to the ultimate law of dramatic art. In the 
case of great plays, the dramatic representation is 
most successful from the genuinely artistic point 
of view — which is the only point of view worthy 
of discussion — when the just dramatic illusion is 
produced by simple and unpretending scenic ap- 
pUances, in which the inevitable ''imperfections" 



24 SHAKESPEARE AND THE MODERN STAGE 

are frankly left to be supplied by the ^ thoughts" 
or imagination of the spectators. 

Lovers of Shakespeare should lose no opportunity 
of urging the cause of simplicity in the production 
of the plays of Shakespeare. Practical common- 
sense, practical considerations of a pecuniary kind, 
teach us that it is only by the adoption of simple 
methods of production that we can hope to have 
Shakespeare represented in our theatres constantly 
and in all his variety. Until Shakespeare is repre- 
sented thus, the spiritual and intellectual enlighten- 
ment, which his achievement offers English-speak- 
ing people will remain wholly inaccessible to the 
majority who do not read him, and will be only in 
part at the command of the few who do. Nay, 
more: until Shakespeare is represented on the stage 
constantly and in his variety, English-speaking men 
and women are liable t6 the imputation, not merely 
of failing in the homage due to the greatest of their 
countr3m[ien, but of falling short of their neigh- 
bours in Germany and Austria in the capacity of 
appreciating supremely great imaginative Uterature. 



II 



SHAKESPEARE AND THE ELIZABETHAN 
PLAYGOER 1 



In a freak of fancy, Robert Louis Stevenson sent to 
a congenial spirit the imaginary intelligence that a 
well-known firm of London publishers had, after 
their wont, '^ declined with thanks" six undis- 
covered tragedies, one romantic comedy, a fragment 
of a journal extending over six years, and an un- 
finished autobiography reaching up to the first 
performance of King John by ''that venerable 
but still respected writer, William Shakespeare." 
Stevenson was writing in a frivolous mood; but 
such words stir the imagination. The ordinary 
person, if he had to choose among the enumerated 
items of Shakespeare's newly-discovered manu- 
scripts, would cheerfully go without the six new 
tragedies and the one romantic comedy, if he had 
at his disposal, by way of consolation, the journal 
extending over six years and the autobiography 

^ This paper, which was first printed in " An English Mis- 
cellany, presented to Dr Furnivall in honour of his seventy-fifth 
birthday" (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, IQOl), was written 
as a lecture for delivery on Tuesday afternoon, March 20, IQOO, 
at Queen's College (for women) in Harley Street, London, in aid 
of the Fund for securing a picture commemorating Queen Vic- 
toria's visit to the College in 1898. 

25 



26 THE ELIZABETHAN PLAYGOER 

reaching up to the first performance of King John. 
We should deem ourselves fortunate if we had the 
journal alone. It would hardly matter which six 
years of Shakespeare's life the journal covered. 
As a boy, as a young actor, as an industrious re- 
viser of other men's plays, as the humorous creator 
of Falstaff, Benedick, and Mercutio, as the profound 
''natural philosopher" of the great tragedies, he 
could never have been quite an ordinary diarist. 
Great men have been known to keep diaries in 
which the level of interest does not rise above a 
visit to the barber or the dentist. The common 
routine of life interested Shakespeare, but some- 
thing beyond it must have found place in his journal. 
Reference to his glorious achievement must have 
gained entry there. 

Some notice, we may be sure, figured in Shake- 
speare's diary of the first performances of his great 
plays on the stage. However eminent a man is 
through native genius or from place of power, he 
can never be indifferent, whatever his casual pro- 
fessions to the contrary, to the reception accorded 
by his fellowmen to the work of his hand and head. 
I picture Shakespeare as the soul of modesty and 
gentleness in the social relations of life, avoiding un- 
becoming self-advertisement, and rating at its just 
value empty flattery, the mere adulation of the lips. 
Gushing laudation is as little to the taste of wise 
men as treacle. They cannot escape condiments 
of the kind, but the smaller and less frequent 
the doses the more they are content. Shake- 
speare no doubt had the great man's self-con- 
fidence which renders him to a large extent inde- 
pendent of the opinion of his fellows. At the same 



THE GHOST IN HAMLET 27 

time, the knowledge that he had succeeded in 
stirring the reader or hearer of his plays, the knowl- 
edge that his words had gripped their hearts and 
intellects, cannot have been ungrateful to him. To 
desire recognition for his work is for the artist an 
inevitable and a laudable ambition. A working 
dramatist by the circumstance of his calling ap- 
peals as soon as the play is written to the play- 
goer for a sympathetic appreciation. Nature im- 
pelled Shakespeare to note on the pages of his 
journal his impression of the sentiment with which 
the fruits of his pen were welcomed in the play- 
house. 

But Shakespeare's journal does not exist, and 
we can only speculate as to its contents. 



II 

We would give much to know how Shakespeare 
recorded in his diary the first performance of 
Hamlet, the most fascinating of all his works. He 
himself, we are credibly told, played the Ghost. 
We would give much for a record of the feelings 
which lay on the first production of the play beneath 
the breast of the silent apparition in the first scene 
which twice crossed the stage and affrighted Mar- 
cellus, Horatio, and the guards on the platform 
before the castle of Elsinore. No piece of litera- 
ture that ever came from human pen or brain is 
more closely packed with fruit of the imaginative 
study of human life than is Shakespeare's tragedy 
of Hamlet; and while the author acted the part of 
the Ghost in the play's initial representation in 



28 THE ELIZABETHAN PLAYGOER 

the theatre, he was watching the revelation of his 
pregnant message for the first time to the external 
world. When the author in his weird role of Ham- 
let's murdered father opened his lips for the first 
time, we might almost imagine that in the words 
''pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing to what 
I shall unfold," he was reflecting the author's per- 
sonal interest in the proceedings of that memorable 
afternoon.^ We can imagine Shakespeare, as he 
saw the audience responding to his grave appeal, 
giving with a growing confidence, the subsequent 
words which he repeated while he moved to the 
centre of the platform-stage, and turned to face the 
whole house: — 

I find thee apt; 
And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed 
That rots itself in ease on Lethe wharf, 
Wouldst thou not stir in this. 

As the Ghost vanished and the air rang mysteri- 
ously with his piercing words ''Remember me,'* 
we would like to imagine the whole intelligence of 
Elizabethan England responding to that cry as it 
sprang on its first utterance in the theatre from the 
great dramatist's own lips. Since that memorable 
day, at any rate, the whole intelligence of the 
world has responded to that cry with all Hamlet's 
ecstasy, and with but a single modification of the 
phraseology : — 

Remember thee ! 
Ay, thou great soul, while memory holds a seat 
In this distracted globe. 

^ Performances of plays in Shakespeare's time always took 
place in the afternoon. 



CONTEMPORARY POPULARITY 29 

III 

There is a certain justification, in fact, for the 
fancy that the plaudites were loud and long, when 
Shakespeare created the role of the '^poor ghost '^ 
in the first production of his play of Hamlet in 
1602. There is no doubt at all that Shakespeare 
conspicuously caught the ear of the EHzabethan 
playgoer at a very early date in his career, and that 
he held it firmly for life. '^ These plays," wrote 
two of his professional associates of the reception 
of the whole series in the playhouse in his lifetime 
— ''These plays have had their trial already, and 
stood out all appeals." Matthew Arnold, appar- 
ently quite unconsciously, echoed the precise phrase 
when seeking to express poetically, the universaUty 
of Shakespeare's reputation in our own day. 

Others abide our judgment, thou art free, 

is the first line of Arnold's well-known sonnet, 
which attests the rank allotted to Shakespeare in 
the hterary hierarchy by the professional critic, 
nearly two and a half centuries after the dramatist's 
death. There was no narrower qualification in the 
apostrophe of Shakespeare by Ben Jonson, a very 
critical contemporary, as: — 

Soul of the age, 
The applause, delight, and wonder of our stage. 

This play of Hamlet, this play of his "which 
most kindled English hearts," received a specially 
enthusiastic welcome from Elizabethan playgoers. 
It was acted within its first year of production re- 
peatedly (''divers times"), not merely in London 
"and elsewhere," but also — an unusual distinction 



30 THE ELIZABETHAN PLAYGOER 

— at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. It 
was reprinted four times within eight years of its 
birth. 

Thus the charge sometimes brought against the 
Ehzabethan playgoer of failing to recognise Shake- 
speare's sovereign genius should be reckoned among 
popular errors. It was not merely the recognition 
of the critical and highly educated that Shake- 
speare received in person. It was by the voice of 
the half-educated populace, whose heart and in- 
tellect were for once in the right, that he was ac- 
claimed the greatest interpreter of human nature 
that literature had known, and, as subsequent ex- 
perience has proved, was likely to know. There is 
evidence that throughout his lifetime and for a 
generation afterwards his plays drew crowds to pit, 
boxes, and gallery alike. It is true that he was 
one of a number of popular dramatists, many of 
whom had rare gifts, and all of whom glowed with 
a spark of the genuine literary fire. But Shake- 
speare was the sun in the firmament : when his light 
shone, the fires of all contemporaries paled in the 
contemporary playgoer's eye. There is forcible 
and humorous portrayal of human frailty and 
eccentricity in plays of Shakespeare's contem- 
porary, Ben Jonson. Ben Jonson was a classical 
scholar, which Shakespeare was not. Jonson was 
as well versed in Roman history as a college tutor. 
But when Shakespeare and Ben Jonson both tried 
their hands at dramatising episodes in Roman 
history, the Elizabethan public of all degrees of 
intelligence welcomed Shakespeare's efforts with an 
enthusiasm which they rigidly withheld from Ben 
Jonson's. This is how an ordinary playgoer con- 



SHAKESPEARE AT COURT IN 1594 31 

trasted the reception of Jonson's Roman play of 
Catiline^s Conspiracy with that of Shakespeare's 
Roman play of Julius Ccesar: — 

So have I seen when Caesar would appear. 
And on the stage at half-sword parley were 
Brutus and Cassius — oh ! how the audience 
Were ravished, with what wonder they went thence ; 
When some new day they would not brook a line 
Of tedious though well-laboured Catiline. 

Shakespeare was the popular favourite. It is 
rare that the artist who is a hero with the multitude 
is also a hero with the cultivated few. But Shake- 
speare's universality of appeal was such as to include 
among his worshippers from the first the trained 
and the untrained playgoer of his time. 

IV 

Very early in his career did Shakespeare attract 
the notice of the cultivated section of Elizabeth's 
Court, and hardly sufficient notice has been taken 
by students of the poet's biography of the earliest 
recognition accorded him by the great queen, her- 
self an inveterate lover of the drama, and an em- 
bodiment of the taste of the people in literature. 
The story is worth retelling. In the middle of De- 
cember 1594, Queen Elizabeth removed from White- 
hall to Greenwich to spend Christmas at that palace 
of Greenwich in which she was born sixty-one years 
earlier. And she made the celebration of Christmas 
of 1594 more memorable than any other in the 
annals of her reign or in the literary history of the 
country by summoning Shakespeare to Court. It 
was less than eight years since the poet had first set 
foot in the metropolis. His career was little more 



32 THE ELIZABETHAN PLAYGOER 

than opened. But by 1594 Shakespeare had given 
his countrymen unmistakable indications of the 
stuff of which he was made. His progress had 
been more sure than rapid. A young man of two- 
and-twenty, burdened with a wife and three children, 
he had left his home in the little country town of 
Stratford-on-Avon in 1586 to seek his fortune in 
London. Without friends, without money, he had, 
like any other stage-struck youth, set his heart 
on becoming an actor in the metropolis. Fortune 
favoured him. He sought and won the humble 
office of call-boy in a London playhouse; but no 
sooner had his foot touched the lowest rung of the 
theatrical ladder than his genius taught him that 
the topmost rung was within his reach. He tried 
his hand on the revision of an old play, and the 
manager was not slow to recognise an unmatched 
gift for dramatic writing. 

It was probably not till 1591, when Shakespeare 
was twenty-seven, that his earliest original play, 
Love's Labour's Lost, was performed. It showed the 
hand of a beginner; it abounded in trivial witticisms. 
But above all, there shone out clearly and unmis- 
takably the dramatic and poetic fire, the humorous 
outlook on life, the insight into human feeling, which 
were to inspire Titanic achievements in the future. 

Soon after, Shakespeare scaled the tragic heights 
of Romeo and Juliet, and he was hailed as the 
prophet of a new world of art. Fashionable London 
society then, as now, befriended the theatre. Cul- 
tivated noblemen offered their patronage to promis- 
ing writers for the stage, and Shakespeare soon gained 
the ear of the young Earl of Southampton, one of 
the most accomplished and handsome of the queen's 



SHAKESPEARE'S HISTRIONIC REPUTE 33 

noble courtiers, who was said to spend nearly all 
his time in going to the playhouse every day. It 
was at Southampton's suggestion, that, in the week 
preceding the Christmas of 1594, the Lord Cham- 
berlain sent word to The Theatre in Shoreditch, 
where Shakespeare was at work as playwright and 
actor, that the poet was expected at Court on two 
days following Christmas, in order to give his sov- 
ereign on the two evenings a taste of his quality. 
He was to act before her in his own plays. 

It cannot have been Shakespeare's promise as 
an actor that led to the royal summons. His his- 
trionic fame had not progressed at the same rate 
as his Uterary repute. He was never to win the 
laurels of a great actor. His most conspicuous 
triumph on the stage was achieved in middle life as 
the Ghost in his own Hamlet, and he ordinarily 
confined his efforts to old men of secondary rank. 
Ample compensation was provided by his com- 
panions for his personal deficiencies as an actor on 
his first visit to Court; he was to come supported by 
actors of the highest eminence in their generation. 
Directions were given that the greatest of the tragic 
actors of the day, Richard Burbage, and the great- 
est of the comic actors, William Kemp, were to 
bear the young actor-dramatist company. With 
neither of these was Shakespeare's histrionic posi- 
tion then or at any time comparable. For years 
they were leaders of the acting profession. 

Shakespeare's relations with Burbage and Kemp 
were close, both privately and professionally. Al- 
most all Shakespeare's great tragic characters were 
created on the stage by Burbage, who had lately 
roused London to enthusiasm by his stirring presen- 



34 THE ELIZABETHAN PLAYGOER 

tation of Shakespeare's Richard III. for the first 
time. As long as Kemp hved, he conferred a like 
service on many of Shakespeare's comic characters; 
and he had recently proved his worth as a Shake- 
spearean comedian b}^ his original rendering of the 
part of Peter, the Nurse's graceless attendant, in 
Romeo and Juliet. Thus stoutly backed, Shake- 
speare appeared for the first time in the royal pres- 
ence-chamber of Greenwich Palace on the evening 
of St. Stephen's Day (the Boxing Day of subse- 
quent generations) in 1594. 

Extant documentary evidence attests that Shake- 
speare and his two associates performed one '^comedy 
or interlude" on that night of Boxing Day in 1594, 
and gave another ''comedy or interlude" on the 
next night but one; that the Lord Chamberlain paid 
the three men for their services the sum of £13, 6s. 
8d., and that the queen added to the honorarium, 
as a personal proof of her satisfaction, the further 
sum of £6, 13s. 4d. These were substantial sums 
in those days, when the purchasing power of money 
was eight times as much as it is to-day, and the 
three actors' reward would now be equivalent to 
£160. 

Unhappily the record does not go beyond the 
payment of the money. What words of commen- 
dation or encouragement Shakespeare received from 
his royal auditor are not handed down, nor do we 
know for certain what plays were performed on the 
great occasion. All the scenes came from Shake- 
speare's repertory, and it is reasonable to infer that 
they were drawn from Lovers Labour^ s Lost, which 
was always popular in later years at Elizabeth's 
Court, and from The Comedy of Errors, where the 



SHAKESPEARE'S ROYAL PATRONS 35 

farcial confusions and horse-play were after the 
queen's own heart and robust taste. But nothing 
can be stated with absolute certainty except that 
on December 29 Shakespeare travelled up the river 
from Greenwich to London with a heavier purse 
and a lighter heart than on his setting out. That 
the visit had in all ways been crowned with success 
there is ample indirect evidence. He and his work 
had fascinated his sovereign, and many a time 
during her remaining nine years of life was she to 
seek delight again in the renderings of plays by 
himself and his fellow-actors at her palaces on the 
banks of the Thames. When Shakespeare was 
penning his new play of A Midsummer Nighfs 
Dream next year, he could not forbear to make a 
passing obeisance of gallantry (in that vein for 
which the old spinster queen was always thirsting) 
to ''a fair vestal throned by the West," who passed 
her Ufe ''in maiden meditation, fancy free." 

Although literature and art can flourish without 
royal favour and royal patronage, still it is rare that 
royal patronage has any other effect than that of 
raising those who are its objects in the estimation 
of contemporaries. The interest that Shakespeare's 
work excited at Court was continuous throughout 
his life. When James I. ascended the throne, 
no author was more frequently honoured by 
''command" performances of his plays in the 
presence of the sovereign. And then, as now, 
the playgoer's appreciation was quickened by his 
knowledge that the play they were witnessing had 
been produced before the Court at Whitehall a few 
days earlier. Shakespeare's publishers were not 
above advertising facts hke these, as may be seen by 



36 THE ELIZABETHAN PLAYGOER 

a survey of the title-pages of editions published in 
his life-time. ''The pleasant conceited comedy called 
Lovers Labour^ s Lost'' was advertised with the ap- 
pended words, ''as it was presented before her high- 
ness this last Christmas." "A most pleasant and 
excellent conceited comedy of Sir John Falstaff and 
the Merry Wives of Windsor'' was stated to have 
been "divers times acted both before her majesty 
and elsewhere." The great play of Lear was ad- 
vertised, "as it was played before the king's majesty 
at Whitehall on St. Stephen's night in the Christ- 
mas holidays." 



Although Shakespeare's illimitable command of 
expression, his universality of knowledge and in- 
sight, cannot easily be overlooked by any man or 
woman of ordinary human faculty, still, from some 
points of view, there is ground for surprise that the 
Elizabethan playgoer's enthusiasm for Shakespeare's 
work was so marked and unequivocal as we know 
that it was. 

Let us consider for a moment the physical con- 
ditions of the theatre, the methods of stage repre- 
sentation, in Shakespeare's day. Theatres were in 
their infancy. The theatre was a new institution in 
social life for Shakespeare's public, and the whole 
system of the theatrical world came into being 
after Shakespeare came into the world. In esti- 
mating Shakespeare's genius one ought to bear in 
mind that he was a pioneer — almost the creator or 
first designer — of English drama, as well as the 
practised workman in unmatched perfection. There 
were before his day some efforts made at dramatic 



THE FIRST THEATRE IN ENGLAND 37 

representation. The Middle Ages had their miracle 
plays and moralities and interludes. But of poetic, 
literary, romantic drama, England knew nothing imtil 
Shakespeare was of age. Marlowe, who in his early 
years inaugurated English tragedy, was Shake- 
speare's senior by only two months. It was not till 
1576, when Shakespeare was twelve, that London 
for the first time possessed a theatre — a building 
definitely built for the purpose of presenting plays. 
Before that year inn-yards or platforms, which were 
improvised in market-places or fields, served for 
the performance of interludes or moralities. 

Nor was it precisely in London proper that this 
primal theatre, which is known in history simply 
as The Theatre, was set up. London in Shake- 
speare's day was a small town, barely a mile square, 
with a population little exceeding 60,000 persons. 
Within the circuit of the city-walls vacant spaces 
were sparse, and public opinion deprecated the 
erection of buildings upon them. Moreover, the 
puritan clergy and their pious flocks, who constituted 
an active section of the citizens, were inclined to 
resist the conversion of any existing building into 
such a Satanic trap for unwary souls as they be- 
lieved a playhouse of necessity to be. 

It was, accordingly, in the fields near London, 
not in London itself, that the first theatre was set 
up. Adjoining the city lay pleasant meadows, 
which were bright in spring-time with daisies and 
violets. Green lanes conducted the wayfarer to 
the rural retreat of Islington, and citizens went 
for change of air to the rustic seclusion of Mary- 
le-bone. A site for the first-bom of London play- 
houses was chosen in the spacious fields of Finsbury 



38 THE ELIZABETHAN PLAYGOER 

and Shoreditch, which the Great Eastern Railway- 
now occupies. The innovation of a theatre, even 
though it were placed outside the walls of the city, 
excited serious misgiving among the godly minority. 
But, after much controversy the battle was finally 
won by the supporters of the play, and The Theatre 
was launched on a prosperous career. Two or three 
other theatres quickly sprang up in neighbouring 
parts of London's environment. When Shakespeare 
was reaching the zenith of his career, the centre 
of theatrical life was transferred from Shoreditch to 
the Southwark bank of the river Thames, at the 
south side of London Bridge, which lay outside the 
city's boundaries, but was easy of access to resi- 
dents within them. It was at the Globe Theatre 
on Bankside, which was reached by bridge or by 
boat from the city-side of the river, that Shake- 
spearean drama won its most glorious triumphs. 

VI 

Despite the gloomy warnings of the preachers, 
the new London theatres had for the average 
Elizabethan all the fascination that a new toy has 
for a child. The average Elizabethan repudiated 
the jeremiads of the ultra-pious, and instantane- 
ously became an enthusiastic playgoer. During 
the last year of the sixteenth century, an intelligent 
visitor to London, Thomas Platter, a native of Basle, 
whose journal has recently been discovered, ^ de- 

^ Professor Binz of Basle printed in September, 1899^ some 
extracts from Thomas Platter's unpublished diary of travels un- 
der the title: Londoner Theater und Schauspiele im Jahre 1599. 
Platter spent a month in London — September 18 to October 20, 
1599. Platter's manuscript is in the Library of Basle University. 



DISCOMFORTS OF AN AUDIENCE 39 

scribed with ingenuous sympathy the dehght which 
the populace displayed in the new playhouses. 

Some attractions which the theatres offered 
had little concern with the drama. Their ad- 
vantages included the privileges of eating and 
drinking while the play was in progress. After the 
play there was invariably a dance on the stage, 
often a brisk and boisterous Irish jig. 

Other features of the entertainment seem to 
have been less exhilarating. The mass of the 
spectators filled the pit, where there was standing 
room only; there were no seats. The admission 
rarely cost more than a penny; but there was no 
roof. The rain beat at pleasure on the heads of 
the ''penny" auditors; while pickpockets commonly 
plied their trade among them without much hin- 
drance when the piece absorbed the attention of the 
''house." ♦Seats or benches were only to be found 
in the two galleries, the larger portions of which 
were separated into "rooms" or boxes; prices there 
ranged from twopence to half-a-crown. If the play- 
goer had plenty of money at his command he could, 
according to the German visitor, hire not only a 
seat but a cushion to elevate his stature; "so that," 
says our author, "he might not only see the play, 
but" — what is also often more important for rich 
people — "be seen" by the audience to be occu- 
pying a specially distinguished place. Fashionable 
playgoers of the male sex might, if they opened 
their purses wide enough, occupy stools on the wide 
platform-stage. Such a practice proved embar- 
rassing, not only to the performers, but to those 
who had to content themselves with the penny pit. 
Standing in front and by the sides of the projecting 



40 THE ELIZABETHAN PLAYGOER 

stage, they could often only catch glimpses of the 
actors through chinks in serried ranks of stools. 

The histrionic and scenic conditions, in which 
Shakespeare's plays were originally produced, pre- 
sent a further series of disadvantages which, from 
any modern point of view, render the more amaz- 
ing the unqualified enthusiasm of the Elizabethan 
playgoer. 

There was no scenery, although there were crude 
endeavours to create scenic illusion by means of 
''properties" hke rocks, tombs, caves, trees, tables, 
chairs, and pasteboard dishes of food. There was 
at the outset no music, save flourishes on trumpets 
at the opening of the play and between the acts. 
The scenes within each act were played continu- 
ously without pause. The bare boards of the plat- 
form-stage, which no proscenium nor curtain dark- 
ened, projected so far into the auditorium, that the 
actors spoke in the very centre of the house. Trap- 
doors were in use for the entrance of ''ghosts" and 
other mysterious personages. At the back of the 
stage was a raised platform or balcony, from which 
often hung loose curtains; through them the actors 
passed to the forepart of the stage. The balcony 
was pressed into the service when the text of the 
play indicated that the speakers were not actually 
standing on the same level. From the raised plat- 
form Juliet addressed Romeo in the balcony scene, 
and the citizens of Angers in King John held col- 
loquy with the English besiegers. This was, in- 
deed, almost the furthest limit of the Elizabethan 
stage - manager's notion of scenic realism. The 
boards, which were bare save for the occasional 
presence of rough properties, were held to present 



THE ELIZABETHAN ACTOR'S COSTUME 41 

adequate semblance, as the play demanded, of a 
king's throne-room, a chapel, a forest, a ship at sea, 
a mountainous pass, a market-place, a battle-field, 
or a churchyard. 

The costumes had no pretensions to fit the 
period or place of the action. They were the 
ordinary dresses of various classes of the day, but 
were often of rich material, and in the height of 
the current fashion. False hair and beards, crowns 
and sceptres, mitres and croziers, armour, helmets, 
shields, vizors, and weapons of war, hoods, bands, 
and cassocks, were mainly relied on to indicate 
among the characters differences of rank or pro- 
fession. 

The foreign observer, Thomas Platter of Basle, 
was impressed by the splendour of the actors' 
costumes. He accounted for it in a manner that 
negatives any suggestion of dramatic propriety : — 

''The players wear the most costly and beauti- 
ful dresses, for it is the custom in England, that 
when noblemen or knights die, they leave their 
finest clothes to their servants, who, since it would 
not be fitting for them to wear such splendid gar- 
ments, sell them soon afterwards to the players for 
a small sum." 

The most striking defect in the practice of the 
EHzabethan playhouse, according to accepted no- 
tions, hes in the allotment of the female roles. It 
was thought unseemly for women to act at all. 
Female parts were played by boys or men — a sub- 
stitution lacking, from the modern point of view, in 
grace and seemliness. But the standard of pro- 
priety in such matters varies from age to age. 
Shakespeare alludes quite complacently to the ap- 



42 THE ELIZABETHAN PLAYGOER 

pearance of boys and men in women's parts. He 
makes Rosalind say, laughingly and saucily, to the 
men of the audience in the epilogue to As You Like 
It, "lil were a woman I would kiss as many of you 
as had beards that pleased me." ''If I were a 
woman," she says. The jest lies in the fact that 
the speaker was not a woman but a boy. Similarly, 
Cleopatra on her downfall in Antony and Cleopatra, 
(V. ii. 220), laments 

the quick comedians 
Extemporally will stage us . . . and I shall see 
Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness. 

The experiment of entrusting a boy with the 
part of Ophelia was lately tried in London not 
unsuccessfully; but it is difficult to realise how 
a boy or young man could adequately interpret 
most of Shakespeare's female characters. It seems 
almost sacrilegious to conceive the part of Cleo- 
patra, the most highly sensitised in its minutest 
details of all dramatic portrayals of female charac- 
ter, — it seems almost sacrilegious to submit Cleo- 
patra's sublimity of passion for interpretation by 
an imfledged representative of the other sex. Yet 
such solecisms were imperative under the theatrical 
system of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth 
century. Men taking women's parts seem to have 
worn masks, but that can hardly have improved 
matters. Flute, when he complains that it would 
hardly befit him to play a woman's part because 
he had a beard coming, is bidden by his resourceful 
manager. Quince, play Thisbe in a ^^mask." At 
times actors who had long lost the roses of youth 
masqueraded in women's roles. Thereby the xm- 
gainliness which marked the distribution of the 



BOYS IN WOMEN'S PARTS 43 

cast in Elizabethan and Jacobean playhouses was 
often forced into stronger light. 

It was not till the seventeenth century was well 
advanced that women were permitted to act in 
public theatres. Then the gracelessness of the 
masculine method was acknowledged and deplored. 
It was the character of Desdemona which was first 
undertaken by a woman, and the absurdity of the 
old practice was noticed in the prologue written for 
this revival of Othello, which was made memorable 
by the innovation. Some lines in the prologue 
describe the earlier system thus: — 

For to speak truth, men act, that are between 
Forty or fifty, wenches of fifteen. 
With bone so large and nerve so uncompliant. 
When you call Desdemona, enter Giant. 

Profound commiseration seems due to the 
Elizabethan playgoer, who was Hable to have his 
faith in the tenderness and gentleness of Desde- 
mona rudely shaken by the irruption on the stage of 
a brawny, broad-shouldered athlete, masquerading 
in her sweet najne. Boys or men of all shapes and 
sizes squeaking or bawling out the tender and 
pathetic lines of Shakespeare's heroines, and no 
joys of scenery to distract the playgoer from the un- 
couth inconsistency! At first sight it would seem 
that the Elizabethan playgoer's lot was anything 
but happy. 

VII 

The Ehzabethan's hard fate strangely contrasts 
with the situation of the playgoer of the nineteenth 
or twentieth century. To the latter Shakespeare is 



44 THE ELIZABETHAN PLAYGOER 

presented in a dazzling plenitude of colour. Music 
punctuates not merely intervals between scenes and 
acts, but critical pauses in the speeches of the 
actors. Pictorial tableaux enthral the most callous 
onlooker. Very striking is the contrast offered by 
the methods of representation accepted with en- 
thusiasm by the EUzabethan playgoer and those 
deemed essential by the fashionable modern mana- 
ger. There seems a rehsh of barbarism in the 
ancient system when it is compared with the one 
now in vogue. 

I fear the final conclusion to be drawn from the 
contrast is, contrary to expectation, more credit- 
able to our ancestors than to ourselves. The 
needful dramatic illusion was obviously evoked in 
the playgoer of the past with an ease that is un- 
known to the present patrons of the stage. The 
absence of scenery, the substitution of boys and men 
for women, could only have passed muster with 
the Ehzabethan spectator because he was able to 
realise the dramatic potency of the poet's work 
without any, or any but the slightest, adventitious 
aid outside the words of the play. 

The Elizabethan playgoer needs no pity. It is 
ourselves who are deserving objects of compassion, 
because we lack those qualities, the possession of 
which enabled the Elizabethan to acknowledge in 
Shakespeare's work, despite its manner of produc- 
tion, 'Hhe delight and wonder of his stage." The 
imaginative faculty was far from universal among 
the EUzabethan playgoers. The play going mob 
always includes groundlings who delight exclusive- 
ly in dumb shows and noise. Many of Shake- 
speare's contemporaries complained that there were 



SHAKESPEARE'S ADVICE TO THE ACTOR 45 

playgoers who approved nothing ''but puppetry 
and loved ridiculous antics," and that there were 
men who, going to the playhouse only ''to laugh 
and feed fool-fat," "checked at all goodness there." ^ 
No public of any age or country is altogether free 
from such infirmities. But the reception accorded 
to Shakespeare's plays in the theatre of his day, 
in contemporary theatrical conditions, is proof 
positive of a signal imaginative faculty in an ex- 
ceptionally large proportion of the playgoers. 

To the Elizabethan actor a warm tribute is due. 
Shakespeare has declared with emphasis that no 
amount of scenery can secure genuine success on the 
stage for a great work of the imagination. He is 
no less emphatic in the value he sets on competent 
acting. In Hamlet, as every reader will remember, 
the dramatist points out the perennial defects of 
the actor, and shows how they may and must be 
corrected. He did all he could for the EHzabethan 
playgoer in the way of insisting that the art of acting 
must be studied seriously and that the dramatist's 
words must reach the ears of the audience, clearly 
and intelhgibly enunciated. 

"Speak the speech, I pray you," he tells the 
actor, "as I pronounce it to you, trippingly on the 
tongue ; but if you mouth it, as many of your players 
do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor 
do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus ; 
but use all gently: for in the very torrent, tempest, 
and — as I may say — ^whirlwind of passion, you must 
acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it 
smoothness. 

"Be not too tame neither, but let your own 

^ Chapman's Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois, Act I., Sc. i. 



46 THE ELIZABETHAN PLAYGOER 

discretion be your tutor : suit the action to the word, 
the word to the action; with this special observ- 
ance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. 
O! there be players, that I have seen play, and 
heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak 
it profanely, that, neither having the accent of 
Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, 
have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought 
some of nature's journeymen had made men and 
not made them well, they imitated humanity so 
abominably." 

The player amiably responds: ''I hope we have 
reformed that indifferently with us." Shakespeare 
in the person of Hamlet retorts in a tone of some 
impatience: ''O! reform it altogether. And let 
those that play your clowns speak no more than is 
set down for them." The applause which wel- 
comed Shakespeare's masterpieces on their first 
representation is adequate evidence that the leading 
Elizabethan actors in the main obeyed these in- 
structions. 

VIII 

Nevertheless the final success of a great imagina- 
tive play on the stage does not depend entirely on 
the competence of the actor. Encircling and de- 
termining all conditions is the fitness of the audietice. 
A great imaginative play well acted mil not achieve 
genuine success unless the audience has at com- 
mand sufficient imaginative power to induce in 
them an active sympathy with the efforts, not only 
of the actor, but of the dramatist. 

It is not merely in the first chorus to Henry V. 
that Shakespeare has declared his conviction that 



THE ACTOR AND THE AUDIENCE 47 

the creation of the needful dramatic illusion is 
finally due to exercise of the imagination on the 
part of the audience. ^ Theseus, in A Midsummer 
Night's Dream, in the capacity of a spectator of a 
play which is rendered by indifferent actors, makes 
a somewhat depreciatory reflection on the charac- 
ter of acting, whatever its degree or capacity. 
But the value of Theseus's deliverance lies in its 
clear definition of the part which the audience has 
to play, if it do its duty by great drama. 

" The best in this kind," says Theseus of actors, 
''are but shadows, and the worst are no worse, if 
imagination amend them.'' To which Hippolyta, 
less tolerant than Theseus of the incapacity of the 
players to whom she is hstening, tartly retorts: ''It 
must be your imagination {i.e., the spectator's), 
then, and not theirs" {i.e., the actors'). 

These sentences mean that at its very best 
acting is but a shadow or simulation of life, and 
that acting at its very worst is likewise a shadow 
or simulation. But the imagination of the audience 
is supreme controller of the theatre, and can, if it 
be of adequate intensity, even cause inferior acting 
to jdeld effects hardly distinguishable from those of 
the best. 

It would be unwise to press Theseus's words to 
extreme limits. All that it behoves us to deduce 
from them is the unimpeachable principle that the 
success of the romantic drama on the stage depends 
not merely on the actors' gift of imagination, but 
to an even larger extent on the possession by the 
audience of a similar faculty. Good acting is need- 
ful. Scenery in moderation will aid the dramatic 

^ See pages 20-21 supra. 



48 THE ELIZABETHAN PLAYGOER 

illusion, although excess of scenery or scenic 
machinery may destroy it altogether. Dramatic 
illusion must ultimately spring from the active and 
unrestricted exercise of the imaginative faculty by 
author, actor, and audience in joint-partnership. 

What is the moral to be deduced from any 
examination of the Elizabethan playgoer's attitude 
to Shakespeare's plays? It is something of this 
kind. We must emulate our ancestors' command 
of the imagination. We must seek to enlarge our 
imaginative sympathy with Shakespeare's poetry. 
The imaginative faculty will not come to us at our 
call; it will not come to us by the mechanism of 
study; it may not come to us at all. It is easier to 
point out the things that will hinder than the things 
that will hasten its approach. Absorption in the 
material needs of life, the concentration of energy 
on the increase of worldly goods, leave little room 
for the entrance into the brain of the imaginative 
faculty, or for its free play when it is there. The 
best way of seeking it is by reading the greatest of 
great imaginative literature, by freely yielding the 
mind to its influence, and by exercising the mind 
under its sway. And the greatest imaginative 
Hterature that was ever penned was penned by 
Shakespeare. No counsel is wiser than that of 
those two personal friends of his, who were the first 
editors of his work and penned words to this effect : 
''Read him therefore, and again and again, and 
then if you do not hke him, surely you are in some 
manifest danger" of losing a saving grace of life. 



Ill 

SHAKESPEARE IN ORAL TRADITION i 



Biographers did not lie in wait for men of eminence 
on their death-beds in Shakespeare's epoch. To the 
advantage of Uterature, and to the less than might 
be anticipated disadvantage of history (for your 
death-bed biographer, writing under kinsfolk's tear- 
laden eyes, must needs be smoother-tongued than 
truthful), the place of the modern memoir-writer 
was filled in Shakespeare's day by friendly poets, 
who were usually alert to pay fit homage in elegiac 
verse to a dead hero's achievements. In that re- 
gard, Shakespeare's poetic friends showed at his 
death exceptional energy. During his lifetime men 
of letters had bestowed on his '^ reigning wit," on 
his kingly supremacy of genius, most generous stores 
of eulogy. Within two years of the end a son- 
neteer had justly deplored that something of Shake- 
speare's own power, to which he deprecated pre- 
tension, was needful to those who should praise him 
aright. But when Shakespeare lay dead in the 
spring of 1616, when, as one of his admirers topically 
phrased it, he had withdrawn from the stage of the 

^ This paper was first printed in The Nineteenth Centura/ and 
After, February, 1902. 

49 



50 SHAKESPEARE IN ORAL TRADITION 

world to the '' tiring-house 'V or dressing-room of 
the grave, the flood of panegyrical lamentation was 
not checked by the sense of literary inferiority which 
in all sincerity oppressed the spirits of surviving 
companions. 

One of the earliest of the elegies was a sonnet by 
William Basse, who gave picturesque expression to 
the conviction that Shakespeare would enjoy for 
all time an unique reverence on the part of his 
countrymen. In the opening lines of his poem 
Basse apostrophised Chaucer, Spenser, and the 
dramatist Francis Beaumont, three poets who had 
already received the recognition of burial in West- 
minster Abbey — Beaumont, the youngest of them, 
only five weeks before Shakespeare died. To this 
honoured trio Basse made appeal to ''lie a thought 
more nigh" one another, so as to make room for 
the newly-dead Shakespeare within their ''sacred 
sepulchre." Then, in the second half of his sonnet, 
the poet, developing a new thought, argued that 
Shakespeare, in right of his pre-eminence, merited 
a burial-place apart from all his fellows. With a 
glance at Shakespeare's distant grave in the chancel 
of Stratford-on-Avon Church, the writer exclaimed: 

Under this carved marble of thine own 

Sleep, brave tragedian, Shakespeare, sleep alone. 

The fine sentiment found many a splendid echo. 
It resounded in Ben Jonson's lines of 1623: — 

My Shakespeare, rise ! I will not lodge thee by 

Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie 

A little further to make thee a room. 

Thou art a monument without a tomb. 

And art alive still, while thy book doth live 

And we have wits to read and praise to give. 



CONTEMPORARY EULOGY 51 

Milton wrote a few years later, in 1630, how Shake- 
speare, ''sepulchred" in ''the monument" of his 
writings, 

in such pomp doth lie. 
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die. 

Never was a glorious immortality foretold for 
any man with more solemn confidence than it was 
foretold for Shakespeare at his death by his circle 
of adorers. When Time, one elegist said, should 
dissolve his "Stratford monument," the laurel about 
Shakespeare's brow would wear its greenest hue. 
Shakespeare's critical friend, Ben Jonson, was but 
one of a numerous band who imagined the "sweet 
swan of Avon," "the star of poets," shining for 
ever as a constellation in the firmament. Such was 
the invariable temper in which literary men gave 
vent to their grief on learning the death of the 
"beloved author," "the famous scenicke poet," 
"the admirable dramaticke poet," "that famous 
writer and actor," "worthy master William Shake- 
speare" of Stratford-on-Avon. 

II 

UnquaHfied and sincere was the eulogy awarded 
to Shakespeare, alike in his lifetime and immedi- 
ately after his death. But the spirit and custom 
of the age confided to future generations the duty 
of first offering him the more formal honour of 
prosaic and critical biography. The biographic 
memoir, which consists of precise and duly authenti- 
cated dates and records of domestic and profes- 
sional experiences and achievements, was in England 
a comparatively late growth. It had no existence 



52 SHAKESPEARE IN ORAL TRADITION 

when Shakespeare died. It began to blossom in 
the eighteenth century, and did not flourish luxuri- 
antly till a far more recent period. Meagre seeds 
of the modem art of biography were, indeed, sown 
within a few years of Shakespeare's death; but out- 
side the unique little field of Izaak Walton's tillage, 
the first sproutings were plants so different from the 
fully developed tree, that they can with difficulty 
be identified with the genus. Apart from Izaak 
Walton's exceptional efforts, the biographical spirit 
first betrayed itself in England in slender, occa- 
sional pamphlets of rhapsodical froth, after the 
model of the funeral sermon. There quickly fol- 
lowed more substantial volumes of collective bi- 
ography which mainly supplied arbitrarily com- 
piled, if extended, catalogues of names. To each 
name were attached brief annotations, which oc- 
casionally offered a fact or a date, but commonly 
consisted of a few sentences of grotesque, uncritical 
eulogy. 

Fuller's Worthies of England, which was begun 
about 1643 and was published posthumously in 
1662, was the first English compendium of biography 
of this aboriginal pattern. Shakespeare naturally 
found place in Fuller's merry pages, for the author 
loved in his eccentric fashion his country's litera- 
ture, and he had sought the society of those who 
had come to close quarters with literary heroes of 
the past generation. Of that generation his own 
life just touched the fringe, he being eight years 
old when Shakespeare died. Fuller described the 
dramatist as a native of Stratford-on-Avon, who 
*'was in some sort a compound of three eminent 
poets" — Martial, ''in the warlike sound of his 



FULLER'S BIOGRAPHICAL EXPERIMENT 53 

name"; Ovid, for the naturalness and wit of his 
poetry; and Plautus, alike for the extent of his 
comic power and his lack of scholarly training. He 
was, Fuller continued, an eminent instance of the 
rule that a poet is born not made. "Though his 
genius," he warns us, "generally was jocular and 
inchning him to festivity, yet he could, when so 
disposed, be solemn and serious." His comedies, 
Fuller adds, would rouse laughter even in the weep- 
ing philosopher Heraclitus, while his tragedies 
would bring tears even to the eyes of the laughing 
philosopher Democritus. 

Of positive statements respecting Shakespeare's 
career Fuller is economical. He commits himself to 
nothing more than may be gleaned from the follow- 
ing sentences: — 

Many were the wit-combats betwixt him and 
Ben Jonson ; which two I behold Hke a Spanish great 
galleon and an EngUsh man-of-war; master Jonson 
(like the former) was built far higher in learning; 
soUd, but slow, in his performances. Shakespeare, 
with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but 
lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack 
about, and take advantage of all winds, by the 
quickness of his wit and invention. He died Anno 
Domini 1616, and was buried at Stratford-upon- 
Avon, the town of his nativity. 

Fuller's successors did their work better in some 
regards, because they laboured in narrower fields. 
Many of them showed a welcome appreciation of a 
main source of their country's permanent reputation 
by confining their energies to the production of 
biographical catalogues, not of all manners of 
heroes, but solely of those who had distinguished 



54 SHAKESPEARE IN ORAL TRADITION 

themselves in poetry and the drama. ^ In 1675 a 
biographical catalogue of poets was issued for the 
first time in England, and the example once set was 
quickly followed. No less than three more efforts 
of the like kind came to fruition before the end of 
the century. 

In all four biographical manuals Shakespeare 
was accorded more or less imposing space. Although 
Fuller's eccentric compliments were usually re- 
peated, they were mingled with far more extended 
and discriminating tributes. Two of the com- 
pilers designated Shakespeare ^Hhe glory of the 
English stage"; a third wrote, ''I esteem his plays 
beyond any that have ever been published in our 
language"; while the fourth quoted with approval 
Dryden's fine phrase: "Shakespeare was the Man 
who of all Modem and perhaps Ancient Poets had 
the largest and most comprehensive Soul." But 
the avowed principles of these tantalising volumes 
justify no expectation of finding in them solid in- 
formation. The biographical cataloguers of the 
seventeenth century did little more than proclaim 
Shakespeare and the other great poets of the country 
to be fit subjects for formal biography as soon as 
the type should be matured. That was the message 
of greatest virtue which these halting chroniclers 
delivered. 

In Shakespeare^ case their message was not 
long neglected. In 1709 Nicholas Rowe, after- 

^ Such a compilation had been contemplated in I6l4, two 
years before the dramatist died, by one of Shakespeare's own 
associates, Thomas Hejrwood. Twenty-one years later, in 1635, 
Heywood spoke of " committing to the public view " his sum- 
mary Lives of the Poets, but nothing more was heard of that 
proj ect. 



ROWE'S BIOGRAPHY OF 1709 55 

wards George the First's poet laureate, published 
the first professed biography of the poet. The 
eminence of the subject justified such alacrity, and 
it had no precise parallel. More or less definite 
lives of a few of Shakespeare's great literary con- 
temporaries followed his biography at long intervals. 
But the whole field has never been occupied by the 
professed biographer. In some cases the delay has 
meant loss of opportunity for ever. Very many 
distinguished EHzabethan and Jacobean authors 
have shared the fate of John Webster, next to 
Shakespeare the most eminent tragic dramatist of 
the era, of whom no biography was ever attempted, 
and no positive biographic fact survives. 

But this is an imperfect statement of the advan- 
tages which Shakespeare's career enjoyed above that 
of his fellows from the commemorative point of 
view. Although formal biography did not lay 
hand on his name for nearly a century after his 
death, the authentic tradition of his life and work 
began steadily to crystallise in the minds and mouths 
of men almost as soon as he drew his last breath. 
Fuller's characteristically shadowy hint of ''wit- 
combats betwixt Shakespeare and Ben Jonson" 
and of the contrasted characters of the two com- 
batants, suggests pretty convincingly that Shake- 
speare's name presented to the seventeenth-century 
imagination and tongue a better defined personality 
and experience than the embryonic biographer knew 
how to disclose. The commemorative instinct never 
seeks satisfaction in biographic effort exclusively, 
even when the art of biography has ripened into 
satisfying fulness. A great man's reputation and 
the moving incidents of his career never live solely 



56 SHAKESPEARE IN ORAL TRADITION 

in the printed book or the Hterary word. In a great 
man's Hfe-time, and for many years after, his fame 
and his fortmies hve most effectually on living lips. 
The talk of surviving kinsmen, fellow-craftsmen, 
admiring acquaintances, and sjonpathetic friends is 
the treasure-house which best preserves the per- 
sonahty of the dead hero for those who come soon 
after him. When biography is unpractised, no 
other treasure-house is available. 

The report of such converse moves quickly from 
mouth to mouth. In its progress the narration 
naturally grows fainter, and, when no biographer 
lies in wait for it, ultimately perishes altogether. 
But oral tradition respecting a great man whose 
work has fascinated the imagination of his country- 
men comes into circulation early, persists long, 
even in the absence of biography, and safeguards 
substantial elements of truth through many genera- 
tions. Although no biographer put in an appear- 
ance, it is seldom that some fragment of oral tradi- 
tion respecting a departed hero is not committed 
to paper by one or other amateur gossip who comes 
within earshot of it early in its career. The casual 
unsifted record of floating anecdote is not always 
above suspicion. As a rule it is embodied in familiar 
correspondence, or in diaries, or in commonplace 
books, where clear and definite language is rarely 
met with; but, however disappointingly imperfect 
and trivial, however disjointed, however deficient 
in literary form the registered jottings of oral tradi- 
tion may be, it is in them, if they exist at all with 
any title to credit, that future ages best reahse the 
fact that the great man was in plain truth a Hving 
entity, and no mere shadow of a name. 



ANTIQUITY OF SHAKESPEAREAN TRADITION 57 

III 

When Shakespeare died, on the 23rd of April, 
1616, many men and women were aUve who had 
come into personal association with him, and there 
were many more who had heard of him from those 
who had spoken with him. Apart from his nu- 
merous kinsfolk and neighbours at Stratford-on- 
Avon, there was in London a large society of fel- 
low-authors and fellow-actors with whom he lived 
in close communion. Very little correspondence or 
other intimate memorials, whether of Shakespeare's 
professional friends or of his kinsfolk or country 
neighbours, survive. Nevertheless some scraps of 
the talk about Shakespeare that circulated among 
his acquaintances or was handed on by them to the 
next generation has been tracked to written paper 
of the seventeenth century and to printed books. A 
portion of these scattered memorabiha of the earliest 
known oral traditions respecting Shakespeare has 
come to Hght very recently; other portions have 
been long accessible. As a connected whole they 
have never been narrowly scrutinised, and I believe 
it may serve a useful purpose to consider with some 
minuteness how the mass of them came into being, 
and what is the sum of information they conserve. 

The more closely Shakespeare's career is studied 
the plainer it becomes that his experiences and 
fortunes were identical with those of all who followed 
in his day his profession of dramatist, and that his 
conscious aims and ambitions and practices were 
those of every contemporary man of letters. The 
difference between the results of his endeavours and 
those of his fellows was due to the magic and in- 



58 SHAKESPEARE IN ORAL TRADITION 

voluntary working of genius, which, since the birth 
of poetry, has exercised ''as large a charter as the 
wind, to blow on whom it pleases." Speculation 
or debate as to why genius bestowed its fullest in- 
spiration on Shakespeare is no less futile than 
speculation or debate as to why he was born into 
the world with a head on his shoulders instead of a 
block of stone. It is enough for wise men to know 
the obvious fact that genius endowed Shakespeare 
with its richest gifts, and a very small acquaintance 
with the literary history of the world and with the 
manner, in which genius habitually plays its part 
there, will show the folly of cherishing astonish- 
ment that Shakespeare, rather than one more nobly 
bom or more academically trained, should have 
been chosen for the glorious dignity. Nowhere is 
this lesson more convincingly taught than by a syste- 
matic survey of the oral tradition. Shakespeare 
figures there as a supremely favoured heir of genius, 
whose humility of birth and education merely serves 
to intensify the respect due to his achievement. 

In London, where Shakespeare's work was mainly 
done and his fortune and reputation achieved, he 
lived with none in more intimate social relations 
than with the leading members of his own prosper- 
ous company of actors, which, under the patronage 
of the king, produced his greatest plays. Like him- 
self, most of his colleagues were men of substance, 
sharers with him in the two most fashionable theatres 
of the metropoUs, occupiers of residences in both 
town and country, owners of houses and lands, and 
bearers of coat-armour of that questionable validity 
which commonly attaches to the heraldry of the 
nouveaux riches. Two of these affluent associates 



THE ACTORS' TRADITION 59 

predeceased Shakespeare; and one of them, Augus- 
tine PhilHps, attested his friendship in a small 
legacy. Three of Shakespeare's fellow-actors were 
affectionately remembered by him in his will, and 
a fourth, one of the youngest members of the com- 
pany, proved his regard for Shakespeare's mem- 
ory by taking, a generation after the dramatist's 
death, Charles Hart, Shakespeare's grand-nephew, 
into his employ as a ''boy" or apprentice. Grand- 
nephew Charles went forth on a prosperous career, 
in which at its height he was seriously likened to 
his grand-uncle's most distinguished actor-ally, 
Richard Burbage. Above all is it to be borne in 
mind that to the disinterested admiration for his 
genius of two fellow-members of Shakespeare's com- 
pany we owe the preservation and pubHcation of 
the greater part of his literary work. The personal 
fascination of ''so worthy a friend and fellow as 
was our Shakespeare" bred in all his fellow-workers 
an affectionate pride in their intimacy. 

Such men were the parents of the greater part of 
the surviving oral tradition of Shakespeare, and no 
better parentage could be wished for. To the first 
accessible traditions of proved oral currency after 
Shakespeare's death, the two fellow-actors who 
called the great First FoUo into existence pledged 
their credit in writing only seven years after his 
death. They printed in the preliminary pages of 
that volume these three statements of common 
fame, viz., that to Shakespeare and his plays in his 
lifetime was invariably extended the fullest favour 
of the court and its leading officers; that death de- 
prived him of the opportunity he had long con- 
templated of preparing his Uterary work for the 



60 SHAKESPEARE IN ORAL TRADITION 

press; and that he wrote with so rapidly flowing a 
pen that his manuscript was never defaced by alter- 
ation or erasure. Shakespeare's extraordinary rapid- 
ity of composition was an especially frequent topic 
of contemporary^ debate. Ben Jonson, the most 
intimate personal friend of Shakespeare outside the 
circle of working actors, wrote how 'Hhe players" 
woiald ''often mention" to him the poet's fluency, 
and how he was in the habit of arguing that Shake- 
speare's work would have been the better had he 
devoted more time to its correction. The players, 
Ben Jonson adds, were wont to grumble that such 
a remark was ''malevolent," and he delighted in 
seeking to vindicate it to them on what seemed to 
him to be just critical groimds. 

The copious deliverances of Jonson in the tavern- 
parUaments of the London wits, which were in almost 
continuous session during the first four decades of 
the seventeenth century, set flowing much other 
oral tradition of Shakespeare, whom Jonson said he 
loved and whose memory he honoured "on this side 
idolatry as much as any." One of Jonson's remarks 
which seems to have lived longest on the Hps of 
contemporaries was that Shakespeare "was indeed 
honest and [like his own Othello] of an open and 
free nature, ^ had an excellent phantasy, brave no- 
tions and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed 
with that facility that sometimes it was necessary 
he should be stopped." 

To the same category of oral tradition belongs 
the further piece which Fuller enshrined in his 
slender biography with regard to Shakespeare's 

^ lago says of Othello, in Othello, I., iii., 405 : " The Moor is 
of a free and open nature." 



SHAKESPEARE'S ALERTNESS IN DEBATE 61 

alert skirmishes with Ben Jonson in dialectical 
battle. Jonson's dialectical skill was for a long 
period undisputed, and for gossip to credit Shake- 
speare with victory in such conflict was to pay his 
memory even more enviable honour than Jonson 
paid it in his own obiter dicta. 

There is yet an additional scrap of oral tradition 
which, reduced to writing about the time that 
Fuller was at work, confirms Shakespeare's reputa- 
tion for quickness of wit in everyday life, especially 
in intercourse with the critical giant Jonson. Dr. 
Donne, the Jacobean poet and dean of St. Paul's, 
told, apparently on Jonson's authority, the story 
that Shakespeare, having consented to act as god- 
father to one of Jonson's sons, solemnly promised 
to give the child a dozen good "Latin spoons" for 
the father to "translate." Latin was a play upon 
the word ''latten," which was the name of a metal 
resembling brass. The simple quip was a good- 
humoured hit at Jonson's pride in his classical learn- 
ing. Dr. Donne related the anecdote to Sir Nicholas 
L' Estrange, a country gentleman of literary tastes, 
who had no interest in Shakespeare except from 
the literary point of view. He entered it in his 
commonplace book within thirty years of Shake- 
speare's death. 

IV 

Of the twenty-five actors who are enumerated in 
a prehminary page of the great First FoUo, as filling 
in Shakespeare's lifetime chief roles in his plays, few 
survived him long. All of them came in personal 
contact with him; several of them constantly ap- 
peared with him on the stage from early days. 

The two who were longest lived, John Lowin and 



62 SHAKESPEARE IN ORAL TRADITION 

Joseph Taylor, came at length to bear a great weight 
of years. They were both Shakespeare's juniors, 
Lowin by twelve years, and Taylor by twenty, but 
both established their reputation before middle age. 
Lowin at twenty-seven took part with Shakespeare 
in the first representation of Ben Jonson's Sejanus 
in 1603. He was an early, if not the first, inter- 
preter of the character of Falstaff. Taylor as 
understudy to the great actor Burbage, a very close 
ally of Shakespeare, seems to have achieved some 
success in the part of Hamlet, and to have been 
applauded in the role of lago, while the dramatist 
yet Hved. When the dramatist died, Lowin was 
forty, and Taylor over thirty. 

Subsequently, as their senior colleagues one by 
one passed from the world, these two actors as- 
sumed first rank in their company, and before the 
ruin in which the Civil War involved all theatrical 
enterprise, they were acknowledged to stand at the 
head of their profession. ^ Taylor lived through the 
Commonwealth, and Lowin far into the reign of 
Charles the Second, ultimately reaching his ninety- 
third year. Their last days were passed in indigence, 
and Lowin when an octogenarian w^as reduced to keep- 
ing the inn of the ''Three Pigeons," at Brentford. 

Both these men kept alive from personal know- 
ledge some oral Shakespearean tradition during the 

^ Like almost all their colleagues, they had much literary taste. 
When public events compulsorily retired them from the stage, 
they, with the aid of the dramatist Shirley and eight other actors, 
two of whom were members with them of Shakespeare's old com- 
pany, did an important service to English literature. In 1647 
they collected for first publication in folio Beaumont and Fletch- 
er's plays; only one, The Wild Goose Chase, was omitted, and 
that piece Taylor and Lowin brought out by their unaided efforts 
five years later. 



TESTIMONIES OF TAYLOR AND LOWIN 63 

fifty years and more that followed his death. Little 
of their gossip is extant. But some of it was put 
on record, before the end of the century, by John 
Downes, the old prompter and librarian of a chief 
London theatre. According to Downes's testimony, 
Taylor repeated instructions which he had re- 
ceived from Shakespeare's own lips for the playing 
of the part of Hamlet, while Lowin narrated how 
Shakespeare taught him the theatrical interpreta- 
tion of the character of Henry the Eighth, in that 
play of the name which came from the joint pens 
of Shakespeare and Fletcher. 

Both Taylor's and Lowin's reminiscences were 
passed on to Thomas Betterton, the greatest actor 
of the Restoration, and the most influential figure 
in the theatrical life of his day. Through him they 
were permanently incorporated in the verbal stage- 
lore of the country. No doubt is possible of the 
validity of this piece of oral tradition, which re- 
veals Shakespeare in the act of personally supervis- 
ing the production of his own plays, and springs 
from the mouths of those who personally benefited 
by the dramatist's activity. 

Taylor and Lowin were probably the last actors 
to speak of Shakespeare from personal knowledge. 
But hardly less deserving of attention are scraps of 
gossip about Shakespeare which survive in writing, 
on the authority of some of Taylor's and Lowin's 
actor-contemporaries. These men were never them- 
selves in personal relations with Shakespeare, but 
knew many formerly in direct relation with him. 
Probably the seventeenth century actor w^ith the 
most richly stored memory of the oral Shake- 
spearean tradition was William Beeston, to whose 



64 SHAKESPEARE IN ORAL TRADITION 

house in Hog Lane, Shoreditch, the curious often 
resorted in Charles the Second's time to Usten to 
his reminiscences of Shakespeare and of the poets 
of Shakespeare's epoch. 

Beeston died after a busy theatrical Hfe, at eighty 
or upwards, in 1682. He belonged to a family of 
distinguished actors or actor-managers. His father, 
brothers, and son were all, Hke himself, prominent 
in the profession, and some of them were almost 
as long-lived as himself. His own career combined 
with that of his father covered more than a century, 
and both sedulously and with pride cultivated in- 
timacy with contemporary dramatic authors. 

It was probably jWilHam Beeston's grandfather, 
also WiUiam Beeston; to whom the satirical EUza- 
bethan, Thomas Nash, dedicated in 1593, with good- 
humoured irony, one of his insolent Hbels on Gabriel 
Harvey, a scholar who had defamed the memory 
of a dead friend. Nash laughed at his patron's 
struggles with syntax in his efforts to write poetry, 
and at his indulgence in drink, which betrayed itself 
in his red nose. But, in spite of Nash's character- 
istic frankness, he greeted the first William Beeston 
as a boon companion who was generous in his 
entertainment of threadbare scholars. Christopher 
Beeston, this man's son, the father of the Shake- 
spearean gossip, had in abundance the hereditary 
taste for letters. He was at one time Shakespeare's 
associate on the stage. Both took part together 
in the first representation of Ben Jonson's Every 
Man in His Humour, in 1598. His name was again 
linked with Shakespeare's in the will of their fellow- 
actor, Augustine PhilUps, who left each of them a leg- 
acy as a token of friendship at his death in 1605. 
Christopher Beeston left Shakespeare's company of 



WILLIAM BEESTON AND HIS FAMLLY 65 

actors for another theatre early in his career, and his 
closest friend among the actor-authors of his day in 
later life was not Shakespeare himself but Thomas 
Heywood, the popular dramatist and pamphleteer, 
who lived on to 1650. This was a friendship which 
kept Beeston's respect for Shakespeare at a fitting 
pitch. Heywood, who wrote the affectionate lines: 

Mellifluous Shakespeare, whose inchanting Quill 
Commanded Mirth or Passion, was but Will, 

enjoys the distinction of having published in Shake- 
speare's lifetime the only expression of resentment 
that is known to have come from the dramatist's 
proverbially '' gentle lips." Shakespeare (Heyivood 
wrote) ^'was much offended" with an unprincipled 
publisher who '^presumed to make so bold with his 
name" as to put it to a book of which he was not 
the author. And Beeston had direct concern wdth 
the volume called An Apology for Actors, to which 
Heywood appended his report of these words of 
Shakespeare. To the book the actor Beeston con- 
tributed preliminary verses addressed to the author, 
his ''good friend and fellow, Thomas Heywood." 
There Beeston briefly ^dndicated the recreation 
which the playhouse offered the public. Much 
else in Christopher Beeston's professional career is 
known, but it is sufficient to mention here that he 
died in 1637, while he was filling the post that he 
had long held, of manager to the King and Queen's 
Company of Players at Cock-pit Theatre in Drury 
Lane. It was the chief playhouse of the time, and 
his wife was lessee of it. 

Christopher's son, William Beeston the second, 
was his father's coadjutor at Drury Lane, and 
succeeded him in his high managerial office there. 
The son encountered difficulties with the Govern- 



66 SHAKESPEARE IN ORAL TRADITION 

merit through an alleged insult to the King in one 
of the pieces that he produced, and he had to retire 
from the Cock-pit to a smaller theatre in Salisbury 
Court. Until his death he retained the respect of 
the play-going and the literature-loving pubUc, and 
his son George, whom he brought up to the stage, 
carried on the family repute to a later generation. 
William Beeston had no Hking for dissolute 
society, and the open vice of Charles the Second's 
Court pained him. He lived in old age much in 
seclusion, but by a congenial circle he was always 
warmly welcomed for the freshness and enthusiasm 
of his talk about the poets who flourished in his 
youth. ''Divers times (in my hearing)," one of his 
auditors, Francis Kirkman, an ardent collector, 
reader, and publisher of old plays, wrote to him in 
1652 — "Divers times (in my hearing), to the ad- 
miration of the whole company you have most 
judiciously discoursed of Poesie." In the judg- 
ment of Kirkman, his friend, the old actor, was 
''the happiest interpreter and judg of our English 
stage-Playes this Nation ever produced; which the 
Poets and Actors these times cannot (without in- 
gratitude) deny; for I have heard the chief, and 
most ingenious of them, acknowledg their Fames 
and Profits essentially sprung from your instruc- 
tions, judgment, and fancy." Few who heard 
Beeston talk failed, Kirkman continues, to sub- 
scribe "to his opinion that no Nation could glory 
in such Playes" as those that came from the pens 
of the great Elizabethans, Shakespeare, Fletcher, 
and Ben Jonson. "Glorious John Dryden" shared 
in the general enthusiasm for the veteran Beeston, 
and bestowed on him the title of "the chronicle of 



AUBREY ON BEESTON'S GOSSIP 67 

the stage" ; while John Aubrey, the honest antiquary 
and gossip, who had in his disorderly brain the 
makings of a Boswell, sought Beeston's personal 
acquaintance about 1660, in order to ^'take from 
him the lives of the old English Poets." 

It is Aubrey who has recorded most of such 
sparse fragments of Beeston's talk as survive — how 
Edmund ''Spenser was a little man, wore short hair, 
Uttle bands, and short cuffs," and how Sir John 
Suckling came to invent the game of cribbage. 
Naturally, of Shakespeare Beeston has much to re- 
late. In the shrewd old gossip's language, he ''did 
act exceedingly well," far better than Jonson; "he 
understood Latin pretty well, for he had been in his 
younger years a schoolmaster in the country"; "he 
was a handsome, well-shaped man, very good com- 
pany, and of a very ready and pleasant smooth 
wit"; he and Ben Jonson gathered "humours of 
men daily wherever they came." The ample testi- 
mony to the excellent influence which Beeston ex- 
ercised over "the poets and actors of these times" 
leaves little doubt that Sir William D'Avenant, 
Beeston's successor as manager at Drury Lane, 
and Thomas Shadwell, the fashionable writer of 
comedies, largely echoed their old mentor's words 
when, in conversation with Aubrey, they credited 
Shakespeare with "a most prodigious wit," and 
declared that they "did admire his natural parts 
beyond all other dramatical writers." ^ 

John Lacy, another actor of Beeston's genera- 
tion, who made an immense reputation on the stage 

■^ Aubrey's Lives, being reports of his miscellaneous gossip, 
were first fully printed from his manuscripts in the Bodleian 
Library by the Clarendon Press in 1898. They were most care- 
fully edited by the Rev. Andrew Clark. 



68 SHAKESPEARE IN ORAL TRADITION 

and was also a successful writer of farces, was one 
of Beeston's closest friends, and, having been per- 
sonally acquainted with Ben Jonson, could lend 
to many of Beeston's stories useful corroborative 
testimony. With Lacy, too, the gossip Aubrey con- 
versed of Shakespeare's career. 

At the same time, the popularity of Shake- 
speare's grand-nephew, Charles Hart, who was 
called the Burbage of his day, whetted among 
actors the appetite for Shakespearean tradition, 
especially of the theatrical kind. Hart had no 
direct acquaintance with his great kinsman, who 
died fully ten years before he was born, while his 
father, who was sixteen at Shakespeare's death, 
died in his son's boyhood. But Hart's grand- 
mother, the poet's sister, lived till he was twenty- 
one, and Richard Robinson, the fellow-member of 
Shakespeare's company who first taught Hart to 
act, survived his pupil's adolescence. That Hart 
did what he could to satisfy the curiosity of his 
companions there is a precise oral tradition to con- 
firm. According to the story, first put on record 
in the eighteenth century by the painstaking anti- 
quary, William Oldys, it was through Hart that 
some actors made, near the date of the Restora- 
tion, the exciting discovery that Gilbert, one of 
Shakespeare's brothers, who was the dramatist's 
junior by only two years, was still living at a patri- 
archal age. Oldys describes the concern with which 
Hart's professional acquaintances questioned the 
old man about his brother, and their disappoint- 
ment when his failing memory only enabled him to 
recall WiUiam's performance of the part of Adam 
in his comedy of As You Like It. 



D'AVENANT AND SHAKESPEARE 69 

It should be added that Oldys obtained his 
information of the episode, which deserves more 
attention than it has received, from an actor of a 
comparatively recent generation, John Bowman, 
who died over eighty in 1739, after spending ''more 
than half an age on the London theatres." 

V 

Valuable as these actors' testimonies are, it is in 
another rank of the profession that we find the most 
important link in the chain of witnesses alike to the 
persistence and authenticity of the oral tradition of 
Shakespeare which was current in the middle of the 
seventeenth century. Sir William D'Avenant, the 
chief playwright and promoter of theatrical enter- 
prise of his day, enjoyed among persons of influence 
and quality infinite credit and confidence. As a boy 
he and his brothers had come into personal rela- 
tions with the dramatist under their father's roof, 
and the experience remained the proudest boast of 
their lives. D'Avenant was little more than ten 
when Shakespeare died, and his direct intercourse 
with him was consequently slender; but D'Avenant 
was a child of the Muses, and his slight acquaintance 
with the living Shakespeare spurred him to treasure 
all that he could learn of his hero from any who 
had enjoyed fuller opportunities of intimacy. 

To learn the manner in which the child 
D'Avenant and his brothers came to know Shake- 
speare is to approach the dramatist through oral 
tradition at very close quarters. D'Avenant's fa- 
ther, a melancholy person who was never known 
to laugh, long kept at Oxford the Crown Inn in Car- 
fax. Gossip which was current in Oxford through- 



70 SHAKESPEARE IN ORAL TRADITION 

out the seventeenth century, and was put on record 
before the end of it by more than one scholar of the 
university, estabhshes the fact that Shakespeare on 
his annual journeys between London and Stratford- 
on-Avon was in the habit of staying at the elder 
D'Avenant's Oxford hostelry. The report ran that 
*'he was exceedingly respected" in the house, and 
was freely admitted to the inn-keeper's domestic 
circle. The inn-keeper's wife was credited with a 
mercurial disposition which contrasted strangely 
with her husband's sardonic temperament; it was 
often said in Oxford that Shakespeare not merely 
found his chief attraction at the Crown Inn in the 
wife's witty conversation, but formed a closer inti- 
macy with her than moralists would approve. Oral 
tradition speaks in clearer tones of his delight in 
the children of the family — four boys and three 
girls. We have at command statements on that 
subject from the lips of two of the sons. The eldest 
son, Robert, who was afterwards a parson in Wilt- 
shire, and was on familiar terms with many men of 
culture, often recalled with pride for their benefit that 
"Mr William Shakespeare" had given him as a child 
"a hundred kisses" in his father's tavern-parlour. 

The third son, William, was more expansive in 
his reminiscences. It was generally understood at 
Oxford in the early years of the seventeenth century 
that he was the poet's godson, as his Christian 
name would allow, but some gossips had it that the 
poet's paternity was of a less spiritual character. 
According to a genuine anecdote of contemporary 
origin, when the boy, William D'Avenant, in 
Shakespeare's lifetime, informed a doctor of the 
university that he was on his way to ask a blessing 



D'AVENANT'S INFLUENCE 71 

of his godfather who had just arrived in the town, 
the child was warned by his interlocutor against 
taking the name of God in vain. It is proof of the 
estimation in which D'Avenant held Shakespeare 
that when he came to man's estate he was "content 
enough to have" the insinuation "thought to be 
true." He would talk freely with his friends over 
a glass of wine of Shakespeare's visits to his father's 
house, and would say "that it seemed to him that 
he wrote with Shakespeare's very spirit." Of his 
reverence for Shakespeare he gave less questionable 
proof in a youthful elegy in which he represented 
the flowers and trees on the banks of the Avon 
mourning for Shakespeare's death and the river 
weeping itself away. He was credited, too, with 
having adopted the new spelling of his name 
D'Avensint (for Davenant), so as to read into it a 
reference to the river Avon. 

In maturer age D'Avenant sought out the old 
actors Taylor and Lowin, and mastered their in- 
formation respecting Shakespeare, their early col- 
league on the stage. With a curious perversity he 
mainly devoted his undoubted genius in his later 
years to rewriting in accordance with the debased 
taste of Charles the Second's reign the chief works 
of his idol; but until D'Avenant's death in 1668 
the unique character of Shakespeare's greatness had 
no stouter champion than he, and in the circle of 
men of wit and fashion, of which he was the centre, 
none kept the cult alive with greater enthusiasm. 
His early friend Sir John SuckUng, the Cavalier 
poet, who was only seven years old when Shake- 
speare died, he infected so thoroughly with his own 
affectionate admiration that Suckling wrote of the 



72 SHAKESPEARE IN ORAL TRADITION 

dramatist in familiar letters as ''my friend Mr 
William Shakespeare," and had his portrait painted 
by Vandyck with an open volume of Shakespeare's 
works in his hand. Even more important is Dry- 
den's testimony that he was himself ''first taught" 
by D'Avenant "to admire" Shakespeare. 

One of the most precise and valuable pieces of 
oral tradition which directly owed currency to 
D'Avenant was the detailed story of the generous 
gift of £1000, which Shakespeare's patron, the Earl 
of Southampton, made the poet "to enable him to 
go through with a purchase which he heard he had 
a mind to." Rowe, Shakespeare's first biographer, 
recorded this particular on the specific authority of 
D'Avenant, who, he pointed out, "was probably very 
well acquainted with the dramatist's affairs." At 
the same time it was often repeated that D'Avenant 
was owner of a complimentary letter which James 
the First had written to Shakespeare with his own 
hand. A literary politician, John Sheffield, Earl of 
Mulgrave and Duke of Buckinghamshire, who sur- 
vived D'Avenant nearly half a century, said that he 
had examined the epistle while it was in D'Avenant's 
keeping. The publisher Lintot first printed the 
Duke's statement in the preface to a new edition of 
Shakespeare's Poems in 1709. 

D'Avenant's devotion did much for Shake- 
speare's memory; but it stimulated others to do 
even more for the after-generations who wished to 
know the whole truth about Shakespeare's Hfe. 
The great actor of the Restoration, Thomas Better- 
ton, was D'Avenant's close associate in his last 
years. D'Avenant coached him in the parts both 
of Hamlet and of Henry the Eighth, in the fight of 



BETTERTON AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON 73 

the instruction which he had derived through the 
medium of Taylor and Lowin from Shakespeare's 
own hps. But more to the immediate purpose is 
it to note that D'Avenant's ardour as a seeker after 
knowledge of Shakespeare fired Betterton into 
making a pilgrimage to Stratford-on-Avon to glean 
oral traditions of the dramatist's life there. Many 
other of Shakespeare's admirers had previously 
made Stratford Church, where stood his tomb, a 
place of pilgrimage, and Aubrey had acknowledged 
in haphazard fashion the value of Stratford gossip. 
But it was Betterton' s visit that laid the train for 
the systematic union of the oral traditions of Lon- 
don and Stratford respectively. 

It was not until the London and Warwickshire 
streams of tradition mingled in equal strength that 
a regular biography of Shakespeare was possible. 
Betterton was the efficient cause of this conjunction. 
All that Stratford-on-Avon revealed to him he put 
at the disposal of Nicholas Rowe, who was the first 
to attempt a formal memoir. Of Betterton's as- 
sistance Rowe made generous acknowledgment in 
these terms: — 

I must own a particular Obligation to him [i.e., 
Betterton] for the most considerable part of the 
Passages relating to his [i.e., Shakespeare's] Life, 
which I have here transmitted to the Publick; his 
veneration for the Memory of Shakespear having 
engag'd him to make a Journey into Warwickshire, 
on purpose to gather up what Remains he could of 
a Name for which he had so great a Value. 

VI 

The contemporary epitaph on Shakespeare's 
tomb in Stratford-on-Avon Church, which acclaimed 



74 SHAKESPEARE IN ORAL TRADITION 

Shakespeare a writer of supreme genius, gave the 
inhabitants of the little town no opportunity of 
ignoring at any period the fact that the greatest 
poet of his era had been their fellow-townsman. 
Stratford was indeed openly identified with Shake- 
speare's career from the earliest possible day, and 
Sir WilUam Dugdale, the first topographer of War- 
wickshire, writing about 1650, noted that the place 
was memorable for having given ''birth and sepul- 
ture to our late famous poet Will Shakespeare." But 
the obscure little town produced in the years that 
followed Shakespeare's death none who left behind 
records of their experience, and such fragments of oral 
tradition of Shakespeare at Stratford as are extant 
survive accidentally, with one notable exception, in the 
manuscript notes of visitors, who, like Betterton, were 
drawn thither by a veneration acquired elsewhere. 

The one notable exception is John Ward, a 
seventeenth-century vicar of Stratford, who settled 
there in 1662, at the age of thirty-three, forty-six 
years after Shakespeare's death. Ward remained 
at Stratford till his death in 1681. He is the only 
resident of the century who wrote down any of the 
local story. Ward was a man of good sentiment. 
He judged that it became a vicar of Stratford to 
know his Shakespeare well, and one of his private 
reminders for his own conduct runs — ''Remember to 
peruse Shakespeare's plays, and bee much versed in 
them, that I may not bee ignorant in that matter." 

Ward was a voluminous diarist and a faithful 
chronicler as far as he cared to go. Shakespeare's 
last surviving daughter, Judith Quiney, was djdng 
when he arrived in Stratford; but sons of Shake- 
speare's sister. Mistress Joan Hart, were still living 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON GOSSIP 75 

in the poet's birthplace in Henley Street. Ward 
seems, too, to have known Lady Barnard, Shake- 
speare's only grandchild and last surviving descend- 
ant, who, although she only occasionally visited 
Stratford after her second marriage in 1649, and 
her removal to her husband's residence at Abington, 
near the town of Northampton, retained much prop- 
erty in her native place till her death in 1670. 
Ward reported from local conversation six im- 
portant details, viz., that Shakespeare retired to 
Stratford in his elder days; that he wrote at the 
most active period of his life two plays a year; that 
he made so large an income from his dramas that 
'^ he spent at the rate of £1000 a year "; that he 
entertained his literary friends Drayton and Jonson 
at ''a merry meeting" shortly before his death, and 
that he died of its effects. 

Oxford, which was only thirty-six miles distant, 
supplied the majority of Stratford tourists, who, 
before Betterton, gathered oral tradition there. 
Aubrey, the Oxford gossip, roughly noted six local 
items other than those which are embodied in 
Ward's diary, or are to be gleaned from Beeston's 
reminiscences, viz., that Shakespeare had as a lad 
helped his father in his trade of butcher; that one of 
the poet's companions in boyhood, who died young, 
had almost as extraordinary a ''natural wit"; that 
Shakespeare betrayed very early signs of poetic 
genius; that he paid annual visits to his native 
place when his career was at its height; that he 
loved at tavern meetings in the town to chaff John 
Combe, the richest of his fellow-townsmen, who 
was accused of usurious practices; and finally, that 
he died possessed of a substantial fortune. 



76 SHAKESPEARE IN ORAL TRADITION 

Until the end of the century, visitors were shown 
round the church by an aged parish clerk, some of 
whose gossip about Shakespeare was recorded by 
one of them in 1693. The old man came thus to 
supply two further items of information : how Shake- 
speare ran away in youth, and how he sought ser- 
vice at a playhouse, '^and by this meanes had an 
opportunity to be what he afterwards proved." A 
different visitor to Stratford next year recorded in 
an extant letter to a friend yet more scraps of oral 
tradition. These were to the effect that ^Hhe great 
Shakespear" dreaded the removal of his bones to 
the charnel-house attached to the church; that he 
caused his grave to be dug seventeen feet deep; and 
that he wrote the rude warning against disturbing his 
bones, which was inscribed on his gravestone, in order 
to meet the capacity of the ''very ignorant sort of 
people" whose business it was to look after burials. 

Betterton gained more precise particulars — the 
date of baptism and the like — from an examination 
of the parochial records; but the most valuable 
piece of oral tradition with which the great actor's 
research must be credited was the account of Shake- 
speare's deer-stealing escapade at Charlecote. An- 
other tourist from Oxford privately and independ- 
ently put that anecdote into writing at the same 
date, but Rowe, who first gave it to the world in his 
biography, relied exclusively on Betterton's au- 
thority. At a little later period inquiries made at 
Stratford by a second actor. Bowman, yielded a 
trifle more. Bowman came to know a very reput- 
able resident at Bridgtown, a hamlet adjoining 
Stratford, Sir Wilham Bishop, whose family was 
of old standing there. Sir William was born ten 



THE TRADITION OF GRENDON 77 

years after Shakespeare died, and lived close to 
Stratford till 1700. He told Bowman that a part 
of Falstaff's character was drawn from a fellow- 
townsman at Stratford against whom Shakespeare 
cherished a grudge owing to his obduracy in some 
business transaction. Bowman repeated the story 
to Oldys, who put it on record. 

Although one could wish the early oral tradition 
of Stratford to have been more thoroughly reported, 
such as is extant in writing is sufficient to prove 
that Shakespeare's literary eminence was well known 
in his native place during the century that followed 
his death. In many villages in the neighbourhood 
of Stratford — at Bidford, at Wilmcote, at Greet, at 
Dursley — there long persisted like oral tradition of 
Shakespeare's occasional visits, but these were not 
written down before the middle of the eighteenth 
century; and although they are of service as proof 
of the local dissemination of his fame, they are some- 
what less definite than the traditions that sufi"ered 
earlier record, and need not be particularised here. 
One light piece of gossip, which was associated with 
a country parish at some distance from Stratford, 
can alone be traced back to remote date, and was 
quickly committed to writing. A trustworthy Ox- 
ford don, Josias Howe, fellow and tutor of Trinity, 
was born early in the seventeenth century at Gren- 
don in Buckinghamshire, where his father was long 
rector, and he maintained close relations with 
his birthplace during his life of more than ninety 
3^ears. Grendon was on the road between Oxford 
and London. Howe stated that Shakespeare often 
visited the place in his journey from Stratford, and 
that he found the original of his character of Dog- 



78 SHAKESPEARE IN ORAL TRADITION 

berry in the person of a parish constable who lived 
on there till 1642. Howe was on familiar terms 
with the man, and he confided his reminiscence to 
his friend Aubrey, who duly recorded it, although 
in a somewhat confused shape. 

VII 

It is with early oral tradition of Shakespeare's 
personal experience that I am dealing here. It is 
not my purpose to notice early literary criticism, of 
which there is abundant supply. It was obviously 
the free circulation of the fame of Shakespeare's 
work which stimulated the activity of interest in his 
private fortunes and led to the chronicling of the 
oral tradition regarding them. It could easily be 
shown that, outside the circle of professional poets, 
dramatists, actors, and fellow-townsmen, Shake- 
speare's name was, from his first coming into public 
notice, constantly on the lips of scholars, states- 
men, and men of fashion who had any ghmmer of 
literary taste. The Muse of History indeed drops 
plain hints of the views expressed at the social meet- 
ings of the great in the seventeenth century when 
Shakespeare was under discussion. Before 1643, 
'^all persons of equality that had wit and learning" 
engaged in a set debate at Eton in the rooms of 
'Hhe ever-memorable" John Hales, Fellow of the 
College, on the question of Shakespeare's merits 
compared with those of classical poets. The judges 
who presided over ^Hhis ingenious assembly" unan- 
imously and without qualification decided in favour 
of Shakespeare's superiority. 

A very eminent representative of the culture 
and political intelligence of the next generation was 



ROWE'S BIOGRAPHY OF 1709 79 

in full sympathy with the verdict of the Eton College 
tribunal. Lord Clarendon held Shakespeare to be 
one of the ''most illustrious of our nation." Among 
the many heroes of his admiration, Shakespeare 
was of the elect few who were "most agreeable to 
his lordship's general humour." Lord Clarendon 
was at the pains of securing a portrait of Shake- 
speare to hang in his house in St. James's. Similarl}^, 
the proudest and probably the richest nobleman 
in political circles at the end of the seventeenth 
century, the Duke of Somerset, was often heard to 
speak of his "pleasure in that Greatness of Thought, 
those natural Images, those Passions finely touch'd, 
and that beautiful Expression which is everywhere 
to be met with in Shakespear." 

VIII 

It was to this Duke of Somerset that Rowe 
appropriately dedicated the first full and formal 
biography of the poet. That work was designed 
as a preface to the first critical edition of Shake- 
speare's plays, which Rowe published in 1709. 
^'Though the works of Mr Shakespear may seem 
to many not to want a comment," Rowe wrote 
modestly enough, "yet I fancy some little account 
of the man himself may not be thought improper 
to go along with them." Rowe did his work quite 
as well as the rudimentary state of the biographic 
art of his day allowed. He was under the com- 
placent impression that his supply of information 
satisfied all reasonable curiosity. He had placed 
himself in the hands of Betterton, an investigator 
at first hand. But the fact remains that Rowe 



80 SHAKESPEARE IN ORAL TRADITION 

made no sustained nor scholarly effort to collect 
exhaustively even the oral tradition; still less did he 
consult with thoroughness official records or refer- 
ences to Shakespeare's Uterary achievements in the 
books of his contemporaries. Such labour as that 
was to be undertaken later, when the practice of 
biography had assimilated more scientific method. 
Rowe preferred the straw of vague rhapsody to 
the brick of solid fact. 

Nevertheless Rowe's memoir laid the founda- 
tions on which his successors built. It set ringing 
the bell which called together that mass of informa- 
tion drawn from every source — manuscript archives, 
printed books, oral tradition — ^which now far ex- 
ceeds what is accessible in the case of any poet 
contemporary with Shakespeare. Some links in 
the chain of Shakespeare's career are still missing, 
and we must wait for the future to disclose them. 
But, though the clues at present are in some 
places faint, the trail never altogether eludes the 
patient investigator. The ascertained facts are 
already numerous enough to define beyond risk of 
intelligent doubt the direction that Shakespeare's 
career followed. Its general outline is, as we have 
seen, fulty established by one source of knowledge 
alone — one out of many — by the oral tradition 
which survives from the seventeenth century. 

It may be justifiable to cherish regret for the 
loss of Shakespeare's autograph papers and of his 
familiar correspondence. But the absence of such 
documentary material can excite scepticism of the 
received tradition only in those who are ignorant of 
the fate that invariably befell the original manu- 
scripts and correspondence of EHzabethan and 



PRESENT STATE OF KNOWLEDGE 81 

Jacobean poets and dramatists. Save for a few 
fragments of small literary moment, no play of the 
era in its writer's autograph escaped early destruc- 
tion by fire or dustbin. No machinery then ensured, 
no custom then encouraged, the due preservation 
of the autographs of men distinguished for poetic 
genius. Provision was made in the public record 
offices or in private muniment-rooms for the pro- 
tection of the official papers and correspondence of 
men in public life, and of manuscript memorials 
affecting the property and domestic history of great 
county families. But even in the case of men of 
the sixteenth or seventeenth century in official Hfe 
who, as often happened, devoted their leisure to 
Hterature, the autographs of their literary com- 
positions have for the most part perished, and 
there usually only remain in the official depositories 
remnants of their writings about matters of official 
routine. 

Not all those depositories, it is to be admitted, 
have yet been fully explored, and in some of them 
a more thorough search than has yet been under- 
taken may be expected to throw new light on 
Shakespeare's biography. Meanwhile, instead of 
mourning helplessly over the lack of material for a 
knowledge of Shakespeare's life, it becomes us to 
estimate aright what we have at our command, to 
study it closely in the light of the Hterary history of 
the epoch, and, while neglecting no opportunity of 
bettering our information, to recognise frankly the 
activity of the destroying agencies which have been 
at work from the outset. Then we shall wonder, 
not why we know so little, but why we know so 
much. 



IV 

PEPYS AND SHAKESPEARE 1 

I 

In his capacity of playgoer, as indeed in almost 
every other capacity, Pepys presents himself to 
readers of his naive diary as the incarnation, or the 
microcosm, of the average man. No other writer 
has pictured with the same Ufehke precision and 
simplicity the average playgoer's sensations of 
pleasure or pain. Of the play and its performers 
Pepys records exactly what he thinks or feels. He 
usually takes a more lively interest in the acting 
and in the scenic and musical accessories than in 
the drama's literary quality. Subtlety is at any 
rate absent from his criticism. He is either bored 
or amused. The piece is either the best or the worst 
that he ever witnessed. His epithets are of the 
bluntest and are without modulation. Wiser than 
more professional dramatic critics, he avoids labour- 
ing at reasons for his emphatic judgments. 

Always true to his role of the average man, Pepys 
suffers his mind to be swayed by barely relevant 
accidents. His thought is rarely free from official 

^ A paper read at the sixth meeting of the Samuel Pepys Club, 
on Thursday, November 30, 1905, and printed in the Fortnightly 
Review for January, 1906. 
82 



PEPYS AS PLAYGOER 83 

or domestic business, and the heaviness or Hghtness 
of his personal cares commonly colours his play- 
house impressions. His praises and his censures of 
a piece often reflect, too, the physical comforts or 
discomforts which attach to his seat in the theatre. 
He is peculiarly sensitive to petty annoyances — to 
the agony of sitting in a draught, or to the irrita- 
tion caused by frivolous talk in his near neighbour- 
hood while a serious play is in progress. On one 
occasion, when he sought to practise a praiseworthy 
economy by taking a back seat in the shilUng gallery 
his evening's enjoyment was well-nigh spoiled by 
finding the gaze of four clerks in his office steadily 
directed upon him from more expensive seats down 
below. On another occasion, when in the pit with 
his wife and her waiting-woman, he was overcome 
by a sense of shame as he realised how shabbily 
his companions were dressed, in comparison with 
the smartly-attired ladies round about them. 

Everyone knows how susceptible Pepys was in 
all situations of life to female charms. It was in- 
evitable that his wits should often wander from 
the dramatic theme and its scenic presentation to 
the features of some woman on the stage or in the 
auditory. An actress's pretty face or graceful fig- 
ure many times diverted his attention from her 
professional incompetence. It is doubtful if there 
were any affront which Pepys would not pardon in 
a pretty woman. Once when he was in the pit, 
this curious experience befell him. ''I sitting be- 
hind in a dark place," he writes, "a lady spit back- 
ward upon me by mistake, not seeing me; but after 
seeing her to be a very pretty lady, I was not 
troubled at it at all." The volatile diarist studied 



84 PEPYS AND SHAKESPEARE 

much besides the drama when he spent his after- 
noon or evening at the pla}^ 

Never was there a more indefatigable playgoer 
than Pepys. Yet his enthusiasm for the theatre 
was, to his mind, a faiUng which required most 
careful watching. He feared that the passion might 
do injury to his purse, might distract him from 
serious business, might lead him into temptation 
of the flesh. He had a Httle of the Puritan's dread 
of the playhouse. He was constantly taking vows 
to curb his love of plays, which ''mightily troubled 
his mind." He was frequently resolving to abstain 
from the theatre for four or five months at a stretch, 
and then to go only in the company of his wife. 
During these periods of abstinence he was in the 
habit of reading over his vows every Sunday. But, 
in spite of all his well-meaning efforts, his resolu- 
tion was constantly breaking down. On one oc- 
casion he perjured himself so thoroughly as to 
witness two plays in one day, once in the afternoon 
and again in the evening. On this riotous outbreak 
he makes the characteristic comment: ''Sad to 
think of the spending so much money, and of ventur- 
ing the breach of my vow." But he goes on to 
thank God that he had the grace to feel sorry for 
the misdeed, at the same time as he lamented that 
"his nature was so content to follow the pleasure 
still." Pepys compounded with his conscience for 
such breaches of his oath by all manner of casuistry. 
He excused himself for going, contrary to his vow, 
to the new theatre in Drury Lane, because it was 
not built when his vow was framed. Finally, he 
stipulated with himself that he would only go to 
the theatre once a fortnight ; but if he went oftener he 



PEPYS'S VISITS TO THEATRES 85 

would give £10 to the poor. ''This/' he added, 
" I hope in God will bind me." The last reference 
that he makes to his vows is when, in contraven- 
tion of them, he went with his wife to the Duke of 
York's House, and found the place full, and himself 
unable to obtain seats. He makes a final record 
of ''the saving of his vow, to his great content." 

II 

All self-imposed restrictions notwithstanding, 
Pepys contrived to visit the theatre no less than 
three hundred and fifty-one times during the nine 
years and five months that he kept his diary. It 
has to be borne in mind that, for more than twelve 
months of that period, the London playhouses were 
for the most part closed, owing to the Great Plague 
and the Fire. Had Pepys gone at regular intervals, 
when the theatres were open, he would have been 
a playgoer at least once a week. But, owing to his 
vows, his visits fell at most irregular intervals. 
Sometimes he went three or four times a week, or 
even twice in one day. Then there would follow 
eight or nine weeks of abstinence. If a piece es- 
pecially took his fancy, he would see it six or seven 
times in fairly quick succession. Long runs were 
unknown to the theatre of Pepys's day, but a suc- 
cessful piece was frequently revived. Occasionally, 
Pepys would put himself to the trouble of attending 
a first night. But this was an indulgence that he 
practised sparingly. He resented the manager's 
habit of doubUng the price of the seats, and he was 
irritated by the frequent want of adequate rehearsal. 

Pepys's theatrical experience began with the re- 
opening of theatres after the severe penalty of sup- 



86 PEPYS AND SHAKESPEARE 

pression, which the Civil Wars and the Common- 
wealth imposed on them for nearly eighteen years. 
His playgoing diary thus, became an invaluable 
record of a new birth of theatrical life in London, 
When, in the summer of 1660, General Monk oc- 
cupied London for the restored King, Charles II., 
three of the old theatres were still standing empty. 
These were soon put into repair, and applied anew 
to theatrical uses, althougji only two of them seem 
to have been open at any one time. The three 
houses were the Red Bull, dating from. Elizabeth's 
reign, in St John's Street, Clerkenwell, where Pepys 
■saw Marlowe's Faustus ; Salisbury- Court, White- 
friars, off Fleet Street ; and the Old Cockpit in Drury 
Lane, both of which were of more recent origin. To 
all these theatres Pepys paid early visits. But the 
Cockpit in Drury Lane, was the scene of some of his 
most stirring experiences. There he saw his first play, ■ 
Beaumont and Fletcher's Loyal Subject; and there, 
too, he saw his first play by Shakespeare, Othello. 

But these three theatres were in decay, and new 
and sumptuous buildings soon took their places. 
One of the new playhouses was in Portugal Row, 
Lincoln's Inn Fields; the other, on the site of the 
present Drury Lane Theatre, was the first of the 
many playhouses that sprang up there. It is to 
these two theatres — Lincoln's Inn Fields and Drury 
Lane — that Pepys in his diary most often refers. 
He calls each of them by many different names, 
and the unwary reader might infer that London was 
very richly supplied with playhouses in Pepys's 
day. But public theatres in active work at this 
period of our history were not permitted by the 
authorities to exceed two. ''The Opera" and ''the 



LONDON THEATRES AT THE RESTORATION 87 

* 

Duke's House" are merely Pepys's alternative 

^designations of the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre; 

while ''the Theatre," '/Theatre Royal," and "the 

• King's House," are the varying titles which he 

bestows on the Drury Lane Theatre. ^ 

Besides these two pubhc theatres there was, in 
the final constitution of the theatrical world in 
Pepys's London, a third, which stood on a different 
footing. A theatre was attached to the King's 
Court at Whitehall, and there performances were 
given at the King's command by actors from the 
two pubhc houses.2 The private Whitehall theatre 
was open to the public on payment, and Pepys was 
frequently there. 

At one period of his life Pepys held that his vows 
did not apply to the Court theatre, which was mainly 
distinguished from the other houses by the circum- 
stances that the performances were given at night. 
•At Lincoln's Inn Fields or Drury Lane it was only 
permitted to perform in the afternoon. Half-past 
three was the usual hour for opening the proceed- 

^At the restoration of King Charles II., no more than two 
companies of actors received licenses to perform in public. One 
of these companies was directed by Sir William D'Avenant, 
Shakespeare's reputed godson, and was under the patronage of 
the King's brother, the Duke of York. The other was directed 
by Tom Killigrew, one of Charles II.'s boon companions, and was 
under the patronage of the King himself. In due time the Duke's, 
or D'Avenant's, company occupied the theatre in Lincoln's Inn 
Fields, and the King's, or Killigrew's, company occupied the new 
building in Drury Lane. 

- Charles II. formed this private theatre out of a detached 
building in St. James's Park, known as the " Cockpit," and to 
be carefully distinguished from the Cockpit of Drury Lane. Part 
of the edifice was occupied by courtiers by favour of the King. 
General Monk had lodgings there. At a much later date, cabinet 
councils were often held there. 



88 PEPYS AND SHAKESPEARE 

ings. At Whitehall the play began about eight, 
and often lasted till near midnight. 

The general organisation of Pepys's auditorium 
was much as it is to-day. It had improved in many 
particulars since Shakespeare died. The pit was 
the most popular part of the house; it covered the 
floor of the building, and was provided with seats; 
the price of admission was 2s. 6d. The company 
there seems to have been extremely mixed; men 
and women of fashion often rubbed elbows with 
City shopkeepers, their wives, and apprentices. 
The first gallery was wholly occupied by boxes, in 
which seats could be hired separately at 4s. apiece. 
Above the boxes was the middle gallery, the central 
part of which was filled with benches, where the seats 
cost Is. 6d. each, while boxes Hned the sides. The 
highest tier was the Is. gallery, where footmen soon 
held sway. As Pepys's fortune improved, he spent 
more on his place in the theatre. From the Is. 
gallery he descended to the Is. 6d., and thence came 
down to the pit, occasionally ascending to the boxes 
on the first tier. 

In the methods of representation, Pepys's period 
of play-going was coeval with many most important 
innovations, which seriously affected the presenta- 
tion of Shakespeare on the stage. The chief was 
the desirable substitution of women for boys in the 
female roles. During the first few months of Pepys's 
theatrical experience, boys were still taking the 
women's parts. That the practice survived in the 
first days of Charles II. 's reign we know from the 
well-worn anecdote that when the King sent behind 
the scenes to inquire why the play of Hamlet, which 
he had come to see, was so late in conmiencing, he 



INNOVATIONS IN THE PLAYHOUSE 89 

was answered that the Queen was not yet shaved. 
But in the opening month of 1661, within five 
months of Pepys's first visit to a theatre, the reign 
of the boys ended. On January 3rd of that year, 
Pepys writes that he ''first saw women come upon 
the stage." Next night he makes entry of a boy's 
performance of a woman's part, and that was the 
final record of boys masquerading as women in the 
English theatre. I believe the practice now sur- 
vives nowhere except in Japan. This mode of 
representation has always been a great puzzle to 
students of Elizabethan drama. ^ Before, however, 
Pepys saw Shakespeare's work on the stage, the 
usurpation of the boys was over. 

It was after the Restoration, too, that scenery, 
rich costume, and scenic machinery became, to 
Pepys's dehght, regular features of the theatre. 
When the diarist saw Hamlet ''done with scenes" 
for the first time, he was most favourably impressed. 
Musical accompaniment was known to pre-Restora- 
tion days; but the orchestra was now for the first 
time placed on the floor of the house in front of the 
stage, instead of in a side gallery, or on the stage 
itself. The musical accompaniment of pla3^s de- 
veloped very rapidly, and the methods of opera 
were soon applied to many of Shakespeare's pieces, 
notably to The Tempest and Macbeth. 

Yet at the side of these innovations, one very 
important feature of the old playhouses, which 
gravely concerned both actors and auditors, survived 
throughout Pepys's lifetime. The stage still pro- 
jected far into the pit in front of the curtain. The 
actors and actresses spoke in the centre of the house, 

^ For a fuller description of this theatrical practice see pages 
41—43 supra. 



90 PEPYS AND SHAKESPEARE 

SO that, as Colley Gibber put it, ''the most distant 
ear had scarce the least doubt or difficulty in hearing 
what fell from the weakest utterance . . . nor was 
the minutest motion of a feature, properly changing 
with the passion or humour it suited, ever lost, as 
they frequently must be, in the obscurity of too 
great a distance.'^ The platform-stage, with which 
Shakespeare was famiUar, suffered no curtailment 
in the English theatres till the eighteenth century, 
when the fore-edge of the boards was for the first 
time made to run level with the proscenium. 

Ill 

One of the obvious results of the long suppression 
of the theatres during the Civil Wars and Common- 
wealth was the temporary extinction of play-writing 
in England. On the sudden reopening of the play- 
houses at the Restoration, the managers had mainly 
to rely for sustenance on the drama of a long-past 
age. Of the one hundred and forty-five separate 
plays which Pepys witnessed, fully half belonged to 
the great period of dramatic activity in England, 
which covered the reigns of Elizabeth, James I., and 
Charles I. John Evelyn's well-known remark in his 
Diary (November 26, 1661): ''I saw Hamlet, Prince 
of Denmark, played; but now the old plays begin 
to disgust this refined age," requires much qualifica- 
tion before it can be made to apply to Pepys's 
records of play going. It was in ''the old plays'^ 
that he and all average playgoers mainly delighted. 

Not that the new demand failed quickly to 
create a supply of new plays for the stage. Dry den 
and D'Avenant, the chief dramatists of Pepys's 
day, were rapid writers. To a large extent they 



PEPYS'S FAVOURITE PLAYS 91 

carried on, with exaggeration of its defects and 
diminution of its merits, the old Ehzabethan tradi- 
tion of heroic romance, tragedy, and farce. The 
more matter-of-fact and lower-principled comedy 
of manners, which is commonly reckoned the chief 
characteristic of the new era in theatrical history, 
was only just beginning when Pepys was reaching 
the end of his diary. The virtual leaders of the new 
movement — Wycherley, Vanbrugh, Farquhar, and 
Congreve — were not at work till long after Pepys 
ceased to write. He records only the first runnings 
of that sparkling stream. He witnessed some im- 
pudent comedies of Dryden, Etherege, and Sedley. 
But it is important to note that he formed a low 
opinion of all of them. Their intellectual glitter 
did not appeal to him. Their cynical licentiousness 
seemed to him to be merely '^ silly." One might 
have anticipated from him a different verdict on 
the frank obscenity of Restoration drama. But 
there are the facts. Neither did Mr Pepys, nor (he 
is careful to remind us) did Mrs Pepys, take ''any 
manner of pleasure in" the bold indelicacy of Dry- 
den, Etherege, or Sedley. 

When we ask what sort of pieces Pepys appreci- 
ated, we seem to be faced by further perplexities. 
His highest enthusiasm was evoked by certain plays 
of Ben Jonson, of Beaumont and Fletcher, and of 
Massinger. Near the zenith of his scale of dramatic 
excellence he set the comedies of Ben Jonson, which 
are remarkable for their portrayal of eccentricity 
of character. These pieces, which incline to farce, 
give great opportunity to what is commonly called 
character-acting, and character-acting always ap- 
peals most directly to average humanity. Pepys 



92 PEPYS AND SHAKESPEARE 

called Jonson's Alchemist "sl most incomparable 
play," and he found in Every Man in his Humour 
''the greatest propriety of speech that ever I read 
in my life." Similarly, both the heroic tragedies 
and the comedies of Beaumont and Fletcher, of 
which he saw no less than nineteen, roused in him, 
as a rule, an ecstatic admiration. But of all dra- 
matic entertainments which the theatre offered him, 
Pepys was most "taken" by the romantic comedy 
from the pen of Massinger, which is called The 
Bondman. "There is nothing more taking in the 
world with me than that play," he writes. 

Massinger's Bondman is a well-written piece, in 
which an heroic interest is fused with a genuine 
spirit of low comedy. Yet Pepys's unqualified 
commendation of it presents a problem. Massing- 
er' s play, like the cognate work of Fletcher, offers 
much episode which is hardly less indecent than 
those early specimens of Restoration comedy of 
which Pepys disapproved. A leading character is 
a frowsy wife who faces all manner of humihation, 
in order to enjoy, behind her elderly husband's 
back, the embraces of a good-looking youth. 

Pepys is scarcely less tolerant of Fletcher's more 
flagrant infringements of propriety. In the whole 
of the Elizabethan drama there was no piece which 
presented so liberal a mass of indeUcacy as Fletcher's 
Custom of the Country. Dryden, who was innocent 
of prudery, declared that there was "more in- 
decency" in that drama "than in all our plays to- 
gether." This was one of the pieces which Pepys 
twice saw performed after carefully reading it in 
his study, and he expressed admiration for the 
rendering of the widow's part by his pretty friend, 



MASSINGER'S BONDMAN 93 

Mistress Knipp. One has to admit that Pepys 
condemned the play from a literary point of view as 
"a very poor one, methinks," as ''fully the worst 
play that I saw or believe shall see." But the 
pleasure which Mistress Knipp's share in the per- 
formance gave him suggests, in the absence of any 
explicit disclaimer, that the improprieties of both 
plot and characters escaped his notice, or, at any 
rate, excited in him no disgust. Massinger's Bond- 
man, Pepys' s ideal of merit in drama, has little of the 
excessive grossness of the Custom of the Country. 
But to some extent it is tarred with the same brush. 
Pepys' s easy principles never lend themselves to 
very strict definition. Yet he may be credited with 
a certain measure of discernment in pardoning the 
indehcacy of Fletcher and Massinger, while he con- 
demns that of Dry den, Etherege, or Sedley. In- 
delicacy in the older dramatists does not ignore 
worthier interests. Other topics attracted the earlier 
writers besides conjugal infidelity and the frailty 
of virgins, which were the sole themes of Restora- 
tion comedy. Massinger's heroes are not always 
gay seducers. His husbands are not always fools. 
Pepys might quite consistently scorn the ribaldry 
of Etherege and condone the obscenity of Fletcher. 
It was a question of degree. Pepys was clear in 
his own mind that a line must be drawn somewhere, 
though it would probably have taxed his logical 
power to make the delimitation precise. 

IV 

There is, apparently, a crowning difficulty of far 
greater moment when finally estimating Pepys's 



94 PEPYS AND SHAKESPEARE 

taste in dramatic literature. Despite his admira- 
tion for the ancient drama, he acknowledged a very 
tempered regard for the greatest of all the old dram- 
atists — Shakespeare. He lived and died in com- 
placent unconsciousness of Shakespeare's supreme 
excellence. Such innocence is attested by his con- 
duct outside, as well as inside, the theatre. He 
prided himself on his taste as a reader and a book 
collector, and bought for his library many plays 
in quarto which he diligently perused. Numerous 
separately issued pieces by Shakespeare lay at his 
disposal in the bookshops. But he only records 
the purchase of one — the first part of Henry IV., 
though he mentions that he read in addition Othello 
and Hamlet. ^\Tien his bookseller first offered him 
the great First Folio edition of Shakespeare's works, 
he rejected it for Fuller's Worthies and the newly- 
published Butler's Hudihras, in which, by the way, 
he failed to discover the wit. Ultimately he bought 
the newlj^-issued second impression of the Third 
Folio Shakespeare, along with copies of Spelman's 
Glossary and Scapula's Lexicon. To these soporific 
works of reference he apparently regarded the dram- 
atist's volume as a fitting pendant. He seemed 
subsequently to have exchanged the Third Folio 
for a Fourth, by which volume alone is Shakespeare 
represented in the extant library that Pepys be- 
queathed to Magdalene College, Cambridge. 

As a regular playgoer at a time when the stage 
mainly depended on the drama of Elizabethan days, 
Pepys was bound to witness numerous performances 
of Shakespeare's plays. On the occasion of forty- 
one of his three hundred and fifty-one visits to the 
theatre, Pepys listened to plays by Shakespeare, or 



DEPRECIATION OF SHAKESPEARE 95 

to pieces based upon them. Once in every eight 
performances Shakespeare was presented to his 
view. Fourteen was the number of different plays 
by Shakespeare which Pepys saw during these forty- 
one visits. Very few caused him genuine pleasure. 
At least three he condemns, without any qualifica- 
tion, as ''tedious," or ''silly." In the case of others, 
while he ignored the hterary merit, he enjoyed the 
scenery and music with which, in accordance with 
current fashion, the dramatic poetry was overlaid. 
In only two cases, in the case of two tragedies — 
Othello and Hamlet — does he show at any time a 
true appreciation of the dramatic quality, and in 
the case of Othello he came in course of years to 
abandon his good opinion. 

Pepys's moderate praise and immoderate blame 
of Shakespeare are only superficially puzzling. The 
ultimate solution is not difficult. Despite his love 
of music and his zeal as a collector, Pepys was the 
most matter-of-fact of men; he was essentially a 
man of business. Not that he had any distaste for 
timely recreation; he was, indeed, readily suscepti- 
ble to every manner of commonplace pleasures — to 
all the delights of both mind and sense which 
appeal to the practical and hard-headed type of 
EngHshman. Things of the imagination, on the 
other hand, stood with him on a different footing. 
They were out of his range or sphere. Poetry and 
romance, unless liberally compounded with prosaic 
ingredients, bored him on the stage and elsewhere. 

In the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, of 
Massinger and Ben Jonson, poetry and romance 
were for the most part kept in the background. 
Such elements lay there behind a substantial barrier 



96 PEPYS AND SHAKESPEARE 

of conventional stage machinery and elocutionary- 
scaffolding. In Shakespeare, poetry and romance 
usually eluded the mechanical restrictions of the 
theatre. The gold had a tendency to separate itself 
from the alloy, and Pepys only found poetry and 
romance endurable when they were pretty thickly 
veiled behind the commonplaces of rhetoric, or broad 
fun, or the realistic ingenuity of the stage carpenter 
and upholsterer. 

There is, consequently, no cause for surprise that 
Pepys should write thus of Shakespeare's ethereal 
comedy of A Midsummer NigMs Dream: ''Then to the 
lOng's Theatre, where we saw Midsummer NigMs 
Dream, which I had never seen before, nor shall ever 
again, for it is the most insipid, ridiculous play that 
ever I saw in my life. I saw, I confess, some good 
dancing and some handsome women, which was all 
my pleasure." This is Pepys's ordinary attitude of 
mind to undiluted poetry on the stage. 

Pepys only saw A Midsummer Night's Dream once. 
Tivelfth Night, of which he wrote in very similar 
strains, he saw thrice. On the first occasion his impa- 
tience of this romantic play was due to external causes. 
He went to the theatre ''against his own mind and 
resolution." He was over-persuaded to go in by a 
friend, with whom he was casually walking past the 
house in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Moreover, he had just 
sworn to his wife that he would never go to a play 
without her: all which considerations "made the 
piece seem a burden" to him. He witnessed Twelfth 
Night twice again in a less perturbed spirit, and then 
he called it a "silly" play, or "one of the weakest 
plays that ever I saw on the stage." 

Again, of Romeo and Juliet, Pepys wrote: "It is 



PEPYS ON FALSTAFF 97 

a play of itself the worst I ever heard in my life." 
This verdict, it is right to add, was attributable, in 
part at least, to Pepys's irritation at the badness 
of the acting, and at the actors' ignorance of their 
words. It was a first night. 

The literary critic knows well enough that the 
merit of these three pieces — A Midsummer Nighfs 
Dream, Twelfth Night, and Romeo and Juliet — 
mainly lies in their varied wealth of poetic imagery 
and passion. One thing alone could render the 
words, in which poetic genius finds voice, tolerable 
in the playhouse to a spectator of Pepys's prosaic 
temperament. The one thing needful is inspired act- 
ing, and in the case of these three plays, when Pepys 
saw them performed, inspired acting was wanting. 

It is at first sight disconcerting to find Pepys no 
less impatient of The Merry Wives of Windsor. 
He expresses a mild interest in the humours of 
'Hhe country gentleman and the French doctor." 
But he condemns the play as a whole. It is in 
his favour that his bitterest reproaches are aimed at 
the actors and actresses. One can hardly conceive 
that Falstaff, fitly interpreted, would have failed 
to satisfy Pepys's taste in humour, commonplace 
though it was. He is not quite explicit on the 
point; but there are signs that the histrionic inter- 
pretation of Shakespeare's colossal humorist, rather 
than the dramatist's portrayal of the character, 
caused the diarist's disappointment. 

Just before Pepys saw the first part of Henry 
IV., wherein Falstaff figures to supreme advantage, 
he had bought and read the play in quarto. ''But 
my expectation being too great" (he avers), ''it did 
not please me as otherwise I beUeve it would." 



98 PEPYS AND SHAKESPEARE 

Here it seems clear that his hopes of the actor were 
unfulfilled. However, he saw Henry IV. again a 
few months later, and had the grace to describe it 
as ''a good play." On a third occasion he wrote 
that, '^ contrary to expectation," he was pleased 
by the dehvery of Falstaff's ironical speech about 
honour. For whatever reason, Pepys's affection for 
Shakespeare's fat knight, as he figured on the stage 
of his day, never touched the note of exaltation. 

Of Shakespeare's great tragedies Pepys saw three 
— Othello, Hamlet, and Macbeth. But in considering 
his several impressions of these pieces, we have to 
make an important proviso. Only the first two of 
them did he witness in the authentic version. Mac- 
beth underwent in his day a most liberal trans- 
formation, which carried it far from its primor- 
dial purity. The impressions he finally formed of 
Othello and Hamlet are not consistent one with the 
other, but are eminently characteristic of the variable 
moods of the average playgoer. 

Othello he saw twice, and he tells us more of the 
acting than of the play itself. On his first visit he 
notes that the lady next him shrieked on seeing 
Desdemona smothered: a proof of the strength of 
the histrionic illusion. Up to the year 1666 Pepys 
adhered to the praiseworthy opinion that Othello 
was a '' mighty good" play. But in that year his 
judgment took a turn for the worse, and that for a 
reason which finally convicts him of incapacity to 
pass just sentence on the poetic or literary drama. 
On August 20, 1666, he writes: ''Read Othello, Moor 
of Venice, which I have ever heretofore esteemed a 
mighty good play; but having so lately read the 
Adventures of Five Hours, it seems a mean thing." 



PEPYS ON OTHELLO 99 

Most lovers of Shakespeare will agree that the 
great dramatist rarely showed his mature powers to 
more magnificent advantage than in his treatment 
of plot and character in Othello. What, then, is this 
Adventures of Five Hours, compared with which 
Othello became in Pepys's eyes ''a mean thing"? It 
is a trivial comedy of intrigue, adapted from the 
Spanish by one Sir Samuel Tuke. A choleric 
guardian arranges for his ward, who also happens 
to be his sister, to marry against her will a man 
whom she has never seen. Without her guardian's 
knowledge she, before the design goes further, es- 
capes with a lover of her own choosing. In her 
place she leaves a close friend, who is wooed in 
mistake for herself by the suitor destined for her 
own hand. This is the main dramatic point; the 
thread is very slender, and is drawn out to its ut- 
most limits through five acts of blank verse. The 
language and metre are scrupulously correct. But 
one cannot credit the play with any touch of poetry 
or imagination. It presents a trite theme tamely 
and prosaically. Congenital inability of the most 
inveterate toughness to appreciate dramatic poetry 
could alone account for a mention of the Adventures 
of Five Hours in the same breath with Othello. 

Pepys did not again fall so low as this. The only 
other tragedy of Shakespeare which he saw in its au- 
thentic purity moved him, contradictorily, to trans- 
ports of unquaHfied dehght. One is glad to recall that 
Hamlet, one of the greatest of Shakespeare's plays, 
received from Pepys ungrudging commendation. 
Pepys' s favourable opinion of Hamlet is to be assigned 
to two causes. One is the literary and psychological 
attractions of the piece; the other, and perhaps the 



100 PEPYS AND SHAKESPEARE 

more important, is the manner in which the play 
was interpreted on the stage of Pepys's time. 

Pepys is not the only owner of a prosaic mind 
who has found satisfaction in Shakespeare's portrait 
of the Prince of Denmark. Over minds of almost 
every calibre, that hero of the stage has always 
exerted a pathetic fascination, which natural antipa- 
thy to poetry seems unable to extinguish. Pepys's 
testimony to his respect for the piece is abundant. 
The whole of one Sunday afternoon (November 
13, 1664), he spent at home with his wife, '^getting 
a speech out of Hamlet, ^To be or not to be,' without 
book." He proved, indeed, his singular admira- 
tion for those familiar Unes in a manner which I 
believe to be unique. He set them to music, and 
the notes are extant in a book of manuscript music 
in his library at Magdalene College, Cambridge. The 
piece is a finely-elaborated recitative fully equal to 
the requirements of grand opera. The composer 
gives intelligent and dignified expression to every 
word of the soliloquy. Very impressive is the modu- 
lation of the musical accompaniment to the lines — 

To die, to sleep! 
To sleep, perchance to dream! ay, there's the rub. 

It is possible that the cadences of this musical render- 
ing of Hamlet's speech preserve some echo of the 
intonation of the great actor, Betterton, whose per- 
formance evoked in Pepys lasting adoration. ^ 

It goes without saying that, for the full enjoy- 

^ Sir Frederick Bridge, by permission of the Master and Fel- 
lows of Magdalene College, Cambridge, caused this setting of 
" To be or not to be " (which bears no composer's signature) to 
be transcribed from the manuscript, and he arranged the piece 
to be sung at the meeting of the Pepys Club on November 30, 
1905. Sir Frederick Bridge believes Pepys to be the composer. 



BETTERTON'S RENDERING OF HAMLET 101 

ment of a performance of Hamlet by both cultured 
and uncultured spectators, acting of supreme quality 
is needful. Luckily for Pepys, Hamlet in his day 
was rendered by an actor who, according to ample 
extant testimony, interpreted the part to perfection. 
Pepys records four performances of Hamlet, with 
Betterton in the title-role on each occasion. With 
every performance Pepys's enthusiasm rose. The 
first time he writes (August 24, 1661): ''Saw the 
play done with scenes very well at the Opera, but 
above all Betterton did the Prince's part beyond 
imagination." On the third occasion (May 28, 
1663), the rendering gave him ''fresh reason never 
to think enough of Betterton." On the last occa- 
sion (August 31, 1668) he was "mightily pleased," 
but above all with Betterton, "the best part, I 
believe, that ever man acted." 

Hamlet was one of the most popular plays of 
Pepys's day, mainly owing to Betterton's extraor- 
dinary faculty. The history of the impersonation 
presents numerous points of the deepest interest. 
The actor was originally coached in the part by 
D'Avenant. The latter is said to have derived hints 
for the rendering from an old actor, Joseph Taylor, 
who had played the role in Shakespeare's own day, 
and had been instructed in it by the dramatist him- 
self. This tradition gives additional value to Pepys's 
musical setting in recitative of the "To be or not 
to be" soliloquy. If we accept the reasonable 
theory that that piece of music preserves something 
of the cadences of Betterton's enunciation, it is no 
extravagance to suggest that a note here or there 
enshrines the modulation of the voice of Shake- 
speare himself. For there is the likelihood that 



102 PEPYS AND SHAKESPEARE 

the dramatist was Betterton's instructor at no 
more than two removes. Only the lips of D'Aven- 
ant, Shakespeare's godson, and of Taylor, Shake- 
speare's acting colleague, intervened between the 
dramatist and the Hamlet of Pepys's diary. Those 
alone, who have heard the musical setting of ''To 
be or not to be" adequately rendered, are in a 
position to reject this hypothesis altogether. 

Among seventeenth century critics there was 
unanimous agreement — a rare thing among dramatic 
critics of any period — as to the merits of Betterton's 
performance. In regard to his supreme excellence, 
men of the different mental calibre of Sir Richard 
Steele, Colley Gibber, and Nicholas Rowe, knew no 
difference of opinion. According to Gibber, Bet- 
terton invariably preserved the happy ''medium 
between mouthing and meaning too little"; he held 
the attention of the audience by "a tempered spirit," 
not by mere vehemence of voice. His solemn, 
trembling voice made the Ghost equally terrible to 
the spectator and to himself. Another critic relates 
that when Betterton's Hamlet saw the Ghost in his 
mother's chamber, the actor turned as pale as his 
neckcloth; every joint of his body seemed to be af- 
fected with a tremor inexpressible, and the audience 
shared his astonishment and horror. Nicholas Rowe 
declared that "Betterton performed the part as if it 
had been written on purpose for him, as if the author 
had conceived it as he played it." It is difficult to 
imagine any loftier commendation of a Shakespearean 
player. 

V 

There is httle reason to doubt that the plays of 
Shakespeare which I have enumerated were all seen 



ADAPTATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 103 

by Pepys in authentic shapes. Betterton acted 
Lear, we are positively informed, ''exactly as Shake- 
speare wrote it"; and at the dates when Pepys saw 
Hamlet, Twelfth Night, and the rest, there is no evi- 
dence that the old texts had been tampered with. 
The rage for adapting Shakespeare to current 
theatrical requirements reached its full tide after 
the period of Pepys's diary. Pepys witnessed only 
the first-fruits of that fantastic movement. It 
acquired its greatest luxuriance later. The pioneer 
of the great scheme of adaptation was Sir WiUiam 
D'Avenant, and he was aided in Pepys's playgoing 
days by no less a personage than Dry den. It was 
during the succeeding decade that the scandal, 
fanned by the energies of lesser men, was at its 
unseemly height. 

No disrespect seems to have been intended to 
Shakespeare's memory by those who devoted them- 
selves to these acts of vandalism. However difficult 
it may be to realise the fact, true admiration for 
Shakespeare's genius seems to have flourished in 
the breasts of all the adapters, great and small. 
D'Avenant, whose earliest poetic production was a 
pathetic elegy on the mighty dramatist, never ceased 
to write or speak of him with the most affectionate 
respect. Dry den, who was first taught by D'Aven- 
ant 'Ho admire" Shakespeare's work, attests in his 
critical writings a reverence for its unique excel- 
lence, which must satisfy the most enthusiastic 
worshipper. The same temper characterises refer- 
ences to Shakespeare on the part of dramatists 
of the Restoration, who brought to the adaptation 
of Shakespeare abilities of an order far inferior to 
those of Dryden or of D'Avenant. Nahum Tate, 



104 PEPYS AND SHAKESPEARE 

one of the least respected names in English Utera- 
ture, was one of the freest adapters of Shakespearean 
drama to the depraved taste of the day. Yet even 
he assigned to the master playwright unrivalled 
insight into the darkest mysteries of human nature, 
and an absolute mastery of the faculty of accurate 
characterisation. For once, Tate's Hterary judg- 
ment must go unquestioned. 

It was no feeling of disrespect or of dislike for 
Shakespeare's work — it was the change that was 
taking place in the methods of theatrical represen- 
tation, which mainly incited the Shakespearean 
adapters of the Restoration to their benighted 
labours. Shakespeare had been acted without scen- 
ery or musical accompaniment. As soon as scenic 
machinery and music had become ordinary acces- 
sories of the stage, it seemed to theatrical managers 
almost a point of honour to fit Shakespearean drama 
to the new conditions. To abandon him altogether 
was sacrilege. Yet the mutation of pubHc taste 
offered, as the only alternative to his abandonment, 
the obligation of bestowing on his work every me- 
chanical advantage, every tawdry ornament in the 
latest mode. 

Pepys fully approved the innovations, and two of 
the earliest of Shakespearean adaptations won his 
unqualified eulogy. These were D'Avenant's recon- 
structions of The Tempest and Macbeth. D'Avenant 
had convinced himself that both plays readily lent 
themselves to spectacle; they would repay the em- 
bellishments of ballets, new songs, new music, 
coloured hghts, and flying machines. Reinforced 
by these charms of novelty, the old pieces might 
enjoy an everlasting youth. No spectator more 



ADAPTATION OF THE TEMPEST 105 

ardently applauded such bastard sentiment than 
the playgoing Pepys. 

Of the two pieces, the text of Macbeth was 
abbreviated, but otherwise the alterations in the 
blank- verse speeches were comparatively slight. Ad- 
ditional songs were provided for the Witches, to- 
gether with much capering in the air. Music was 
specially written by Matthew Locke. The liberal 
introduction of song and dance rendered the piece, 
in Pepys' s strange phrase, ''a most excellent play 
for variety." He saw D'Avenant's version of it no 
less than eight times, with ever-increasing enjoy- 
ment. He generously praised the clever combina- 
tion of ''a deep tragedy with a divertissement." 
He detected no incongruity in the amalgamation. 
'^ Though I have seen it often," he wrote later, ''yet 
is it one of the best plays for a stage, and for variety 
of dancing and music, that ever I saw." 

The Tempest, the other adapted play, which is 
prominent in Pepys' s diary, underwent more drastic 
revision. Here D'Avenant had the co-operation of 
Dryden; and no intelligent reader can hesitate to 
affirm that the ingenuity of these worthies ruined 
this splendid manifestation of poetic fancy and in- 
sight. It is only fair to Dryden to add that he dis- 
claimed any satisfaction in his share in the outrage. 
The first edition of the barbarous revision was first 
published in 1670, after D'Avenant's death, and 
Dryden wrote a preface, in which he prudently 
remarked: ''I do not set a value on anything I 
have written in this play but [i.e., except] out of 
gratitude to the memory of Sir William Davenant, 
who did me the honour to join me with him in the 
alteration of it." 



106 PEPYS AND SHAKESPEARE 

The numerous additions, for which the dis- 
tinguished coadjutors are responsible, reek with 
mawkish sentimentality, inane vapidity, or vulgar 
buffoonery. Most of the leading characters are 
duplicated or tripHcated. Miranda has a sister, 
Dorinda, who is repellently coquettish. This new 
creation finds a lover in another new character, a 
brainless youth, Hippohto, who has never before 
seen a woman. Caliban becomes the most sordid of 
clowns, and is allotted a sister, Milcha, who apes 
his coarse buffoonery. Ariel, too, is given a female 
associate, Sycorax, together with many attendants. 
The sailors are increased in number, and a phalanx 
of dancing devils join in their antics. 

But the chief feature of the revived Tempest was 
the music, the elaborate scenery, and the scenic 
mechanism.! There was an orchestra of twenty-four 
vioHns in front of the stage, with harpsichords and 
'theorbos" to accompany the voices; new songs 

^ The Dryden-D'Avenant perversion of The Tempest which 
Pepys witnessed underwent a further deterioration in 1673, when 
Thomas Shadwell, poet laureate, to the immense delight of the 
playgoing public, rendered the piece's metamorphosis into an 
opera more complete. In 1674 the Dryden-D'Avenant edition 
was reissued, with Shadwell's textual and scenic amplification, 
although no indication was given on the title-page or elsewhere 
of his share in the venture. Contemporary histories of the stage 
make frequent reference to Shadwell's " Opera " of The Tempest; 
but no copy was known to be extant until Sir Ernest Clarke proved, 
in The Athenaeum for 25th August 1906, that the second and 
later editions of the Dryden-D'Avenant version embodied Shad- 
well's operatic embellishments, and are copies of what was known 
in theatrical circles of the day as Shadwell's " Opera." Shad- 
well's stage-directions are more elaborate than those of Dryden 
and D'Avenant, and there are other minor innovations; but there 
is little difference in the general design of the two versions. Shad- 
well merely bettered Dryden's and D'Avenant's instructions. 



SCENERY OF THE TEMPEST 107 

were dispersed about the piece with unsparing hand. 
The curious new ''Echo" song in Act III. — a duet 
between Ferdinand and Ariel — was deemed by 
Pepys to be so ''mighty pretty" that he requested 
the composer — Bannister — ^to "prick him down the 
notes." Many times did the audience shout with 
joy as Ariel, with a corps de ballet in attendance, 
winged his flight to the roof of the stage. 

The scenic devices which distinguished the Resto- 
ration production of The Tempest have, indeed, 
hardly been excelled for ingenuity in our own day. 
The arrangements for the sinking of the ship in the 
first scene would do no discredit to the spectacular 
magnificence of the London stage of our own day. 
The scene represented "a thick cloudy sky, a very 
rocky coast, and a tempestuous sea in perpetual 
agitation." "This tempest," according to the stage- 
directions, "has many dreadful objects in it; several 
spirits in horrid shapes flying down among the 
sailors, then rising and crossing in the air; and when 
the ship is sinking, the whole house is darkened and 
a shower of fire falls upon the vessel. This is ac- 
companied by Ughtning and several claps of thunder 
till the end of the storm." The stage-manager's 
notes proceed: — "In the midst of the shower of fire, 
the scene changes. The cloudy sky, rocks, and sea 
vanish, and when the lights return, discover that 
beautiful part of the island, which was the habitation 
of Prospero : 'tis composed of three walks of cypress 
trees ; each side-walk leads to a cave, in one of which 
Prospero keeps his daughter, in the other Hippolito 
(the interpolated character of the man who has never 
seen a woman) . The middle walk is of great depth, 
and leads to an open part of the island." Every 



108 PEPYS AND SHAKESPEARE 

scene of the play was framed with equal elaborate- 
ness. 

Pepys's comment on The Tempest, when he first 
witnessed its production in such magnificent con- 
ditions, runs thus: — ''The play has no great wit but 
yet good above ordinary plays." Pepys subse- 
quently, however, saw the piece no less than five 
times, and the effect of the music, dancing, and 
scenery, steadily grew upon him. On his second 
visit he wrote: — ''Saw The Tempest again, which is 
very pleasant, and full of so good variety, that I 
cannot be more pleased almost in a comedy. Only 
the seamen's part a little too tedious." Finally, 
Pepys praised the richly-embelHshed Tempest with- 
out any sort of reserve, and took "pleasure to learn 
the tune of the seamen's dance." 

Other adaptations of Shakespeare, which followed 
somewhat less spectacular methods of barbarism, 
roused in Pepys smaller enthusiasm. The Rivals, a 
version by D'Avenant of The Two Noble Kinsmen 
(the joint production of Fletcher and Shakespeare), 
was judged by Pepys to be "no excellent piece," 
though he appreciated the new songs, which included 
the familiar "My lodging is on the cold ground," 
with music by Matthew Locke. Pepys formed a 
higher opinion of D'Avenant's liberally-altered ver- 
sion of Measure for Measure, which the adapter 
called The Law against Lovers, and into which he 
introduced, with grotesque effect, the characters of 
Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado about Noth- 
ing. But it is more to Pepys's credit that he be- 
stowed a very quahfied approval on an execrable 
adaptation by the actor Lacy of The Taming of the 
Shrew. Here the hero, Petruchio, is overshadowed 



PEPYSIAN AND MODERN METHODS 109 

by a new character, Sawney, his Scottish servant, 
who speaks an unintelUgible patois. " It hath some 
very good pieces in it," writes Pepys, '' but generally 
is but a mean play, and the best part, Sawny, done 
by Lacy, hath not half its life by reason of the words, 
I suppose, not being understood, at least by me." 

VI 

It might be profitable to compare Pepys's ex- 
periences as a spectator of Shakespeare's plays on 
the stage with the opportunities open to playgoers 
at the present moment. Modern managers have 
been producing Shakespearean drama of late with 
great liberality, and usually in much splendour. 
Neither the points of resemblance between the 
modern and the Pepysian methods, nor the points 
of difference, are flattering to the esteem of our- 
selves as a literature-loving people. It is true that 
we no longer garble our acting versions of Shake- 
speare. We are content with abbreviations of the 
text, some of which are essential, but many of 
which injure the dramatic perspective, and with 
inversion of scenes which may or may not be justi- 
fiable. But, to my mind, it is in our large depend- 
ence on scenery that we are following too closely 
that tradition of the Restoration which won the 
wholehearted approval of Pepys. The musico-scenic 
method of producing Shakespeare can always count 
on the applause of the average multitude of play- 
goers, of which Pepys is the ever-living spokesman. 
It is Shakespeare with scenic machinery, Shakespeare 
with new songs, Shakespeare with incidental music, 
Shakespeare with interpolated ballets, that reaches 



no PEPYS AND SHAKESPEARE 

the heart of the British public. If the average 
British playgoer were gifted with Pepys's frankness, 
I have httle doubt that he would echo the diarist's 
condemnation of Shakespeare in his poetic purity, 
of Shakespeare as the niere interpreter of human 
nature, of Shakespeare without flying machines, of 
Shakespeare without song and dance; he would 
characterise undiluted Shakespearean drama as ''a 
mean thing," or the most tedious entertainment that 
ever he was at in his hfe. 

But the situation in Pepys's day had, despite 
all the perils that menaced it, a saving grace. 
Great acting, inspired acting, is an essential con- 
dition to any general appreciation in the theatre 
of Shakespeare's dramatic genius. However seduc- 
tive may be the musico - scenic ornamentation, 
Shakespeare will never justly affect the mind of the 
average playgoer unless great or inspired actors are 
at hand to interpret him. Luckity for Pepys, he 
was the contemporary of at least one inspired Shake- 
spearean actor. The exaltation of spirit to which he 
confesses, when he witnessed Betterton in the role of 
Hamlet, is proof that the prosaic multitude for whom 
he speaks will always respond to Shakespeare's magic 
touch when genius wields the actor's wand. One 
could wish nothing better for the playgoing public of 
to-day than that the spirit of Betterton, Shake- 
speare's guardian angel in the theatre of the Restor- 
ation, might renew its earthly career in our own 
time in the person of some contemporary actor. 



V 



MR BENSON AND SHAKESPEAREAN 
DRAMA 1 



Dramatic criticism in the daily press of London 
often resembles that method of conversation of which 
Bacon wrote that it seeks ^'rather commendation of 
wit, in being able to hold argument, than of judg- 
ment, in discerning what is true." For four-and- 
twenty years, Mr F. R. Benson has directed an acting 
company which has achieved a reputation in EngUsh 
provincial cities, in Ireland, and in Scotland, by its 
exclusive devotion to Shakespearean and classical 
drama. Mr Benson's visits to London have been 
rare. There he has too often made sport for the 
journalistic censors who aim at ''commendation of 
wit." 

Even the best-intentioned of Mr Benson's critics 
in London have fallen into the habit of concentrating 
attention on unquestionable defects in Mr Benson's 
practice, to the neglect of the vital principles which 
are the justification of his policy. Mr Benson's 
principles have been largely ignored by the news- 
papers; but they are not wisely disregarded. They 
are matters of urgent pubhc interest. They point 

^ This paper was first printed in the Cornhill Magazine, 
May, 1900. 

Ill 



112 MR BENSON AND SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA 

the right road to the salvation of Shakespearean 
drama on the modern stage. They cannot be too 
often pressed on public notice. 

These, in my view, are the five points of the 
charter which Mr Benson is and has long been 
championing with a persistency which claims na- 
tional recognition. 

Firstly, it is to the benefit of the nation that 
Shakespeare's plays should be acted constantly and 
in their variety. 

Secondly, a theatrical manager who undertakes to 
produce Shakespearean drama should change his 
programme at frequent intervals, and should permit 
no long continuous run of any single play. 

Thirdly, all the parts, whatever their significance, 
should be entrusted to exponents who have been 
trained in the delivery of blank verse, and have 
gained some knowledge and experience of the range 
of Shakespearean drama. 

Fourthly, no play should be adapted by the 
manager so as to give greater prominence than the 
text invites to any single role. 

Fifthly, the scenic embellishments should be 
simple and inexpensive, and should be subordinated 
to the dramatic interest. 

There is no novelty in these principles. The 
majority of them were accepted unhesitatingly in 
the past by Betterton, Garrick, Edmund Kean, the 
Kembles, and notably by Phelps. They are recog- 
nised principles to-day in the leading theatres of 
France and Germany. But by some vagary of fate 
or public taste they have been reckoned in London, 
for a generation at any rate, to be out of date. 

In the interest of the manager, the actor, and 



MR BENSON'S PRINCIPLES 113 

the student, a return to the discarded methods has 
become, in the opinion of an influential section of 
the educated pubHc, imperative. Mr Benson is the 
only manager of recent date to inscribe boldly and 
continuously on his banner the old watchwords: 
''Shakespeare and the National Drama," ''Short 
Runs," "No Stars," "All-round Competence," and 
"Unostentatious Setting." What better title could 
be offered to the support and encouragement of the 
intelHgent playgoer? 

II 

A constant change of programme, such as the 
old methods of the stage require, causes the present 
generation of London playgoers, to whom it is 
unfamiliar, a good deal of perplexity. Londoners 
have grown accustomed to estimate the merits of a 
play by the number of performances which are given 
of it in uninterrupted succession. They have for- 
gotten how mechanical an exercise of the lungs and 
limbs acting easily becomes; how frequent repetition 
of poetic speeches, even in the most competent 
mouths, robs the lines of their poetic temper. 

Numbness of intellect, rigidity of tone, artificiality 
of expression, are fatal alike to the enunciation of 
Shakespearean language and to the interpretation of 
Shakespearean character. The system of short runs, 
of the nightly alterations of the play, such as Mr 
Benson has revived, is the only sure preservative 
against maladies so fatal. 

Hardly less important is Mr Benson's new-old 
principle of "casting" a play of Shakespeare. Not 
only in the leading roles of Shakespeare's master- 
pieces, but in subordinate parts throughout the 



114 MR BENSON AND SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA 

range of his work, the highest abihties of the actor 
can find some scope for employment. A competent 
knowledge of the poet's complete work is needed to 
bring this saving truth home to those who are en- 
gaged in presenting Shakespearean drama on the 
stage. An actor hardly realises the real force of the 
doctrine until he has had experience of the potential- 
ities of a series of the smaller characters by making 
practical endeavours to interpret them. Adequate 
opportunities of the kind are only accessible to 
members of a permanent company, whose energies 
are absorbed in the production of the Shakespearean 
drama constantly and in its variety, and whose 
programme is untrammelled by the poisonous sys- 
tem of ''long runs." Shakespearean actors should 
drink deep of the Pierian spring. They should be 
graduates in Shakespeare's university; and, unlike 
graduates of other universities, they should master 
not merely formal knowledge, but a flexible power 
of using it. 

Mr Benson's company is, I believe, the only one 
at present in existence in England which confines 
almost all its efforts to the acting of Shakespeare. 
In the course of its twenty-four years' existence its 
members have interpreted in the theatre no less than 
thirty of Shakespeare's plays. ^ The natural result 

^ Mr Benson, writing to me on 13th January 1906, gives the 
following list of plays by Shakespeare which he has produced: — 
Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors, 
Coriolanus, Hamlet, Henry IV. (Parts 1 and 2), Henry V., 
Henry VI. (Parts 1, 2, and 3), Henry VIII., Julius Ccesar, King 
John, King Lear, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry 
Wives of Windsor, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado 
About Nothing, Othello, Pericles, Richard II., Richard III., 
Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrerv, The Tempest, 



SHAKESPEARE'S MINOR ROLES 115 

is that Mr Benson and his colleagues have learned in 
practice the varied calls that Shakespearean drama 
makes upon actors' capacities. 

Members of Mr Benson's company have made 
excellent use of their opportunities. An actor, like 
the late Frank Rodney, who could on one night 
competently portray Bolingbroke in Richard 11. and 
on the following night the clown Feste in Twelfth 
Night with equal effect, clearly realised something of 
the virtue of Shakespearean versatiUty. Mr Ben- 
son's leading comedian, Mr Weir, whose power of 
presenting Shakespeare's humorists shows, besides 
native gifts, the advantages that come of experienced 
study of the dramatist, not only interprets, in the 
genuine spirit, great roles like Falstaff and Touch- 
stone, but gives the truest possible significance to 
the comparatively unimportant roles of the First 
Gardener in Richard II. and Grumio in The Taming 
of the Shrew. 

Nothing could be more grateful to a student of 
Shakespeare than the manner in which the small 
part of John of Gaunt was played by Mr Warburton 
in Mr Benson's production of Richard II. The part 
includes the glorious panegyric of England which 
comes from the lips of the dying man, and must 
challenge the best efforts of every actor of ambition 

Timon of Athens, Twelfth Night, and A Winter's Tale. Phelps's 
record only exceeded Mr Benson's by one. He produced thirty-one 
of Shakespeare's plays in all, but he omitted Richard II., and the 
three parts of Henry VI., which Mr Benson has acted, while he 
included Love's Labour's Lost, The Trvo Gentlemen of Verona, 
All's Well that Ends Well, Cymheline, and Measure for Measure, 
which Mr Benson, so far, has eschewed. Mr Phelps and Mr 
Benson are at one in avoiding Titus Andronicus and Troilus and 
Cressida. 



116 MR BENSON AND SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA 

and self-respect. But in the mouth of an actor who 
lacks knowledge of the true temper of Shakespearean 
drama, this speech is certain to be mistaken for a 
detached declamation of patriotism — an error which 
ruins its dramatic significance. As Mr Warburton 
delivered it, one listened to the despairing cry of a 
feeble old man roused for a moment from the leth- 
argy of sickness by despair at the thought that the 
great country he loved was in peril of decay through 
the selfish and frivolous temper of its ruler. Instead 
of a Chauvinist manifesto defiantly declaimed under 
the hmelight, there was offered us the quiet pathos of 
a dying patriot's lament over his beloved country's 
misfortunes — an oracular warning from a death- 
stricken tongue, foreshadowing with rare solemnity 
and dramatic irony the violent doom of the reckless 
worker of the mischief. Any other conception of 
the passage, any conscious endeavour to win a round 
of applause by elocutionary display, would disable 
the actor from doing justice to the great and sadly 
stirring utterance. The right note could only be 
sounded by one who was acclimatised to Shake- 
spearean drama, and had recognised the wealth of 
significance to be discovered and to be disclosed 
(with due artistic restraint) in Shakespeare's minor 
characters. 

Ill 

The benefits to be derived from the control of a 
trained school of Shakespearean actors were dis- 
played very conspicuously when Mr Benson under- 
took six years ago the heroic task of performing 
the play of Hamlet, as Shakespeare wrote it, without 
any abbreviation. Hamlet is the longest of Shake- 



HAMLET UNABRIDGED 117 

speare's plays; it reaches a total of over 3900 lines. 
It is thus some 900 lines longer than Antony and 
Cleopatra, which of all Shakespeare's plays most 
nearly approaches its length. Consequently it is a 
tradition of the stage to cut the play of Hamlet by 
the omission of more than a third. Hamlet's part 
is usually retained almost in its entirety, but the 
speeches of every other character are seriously cur- 
tailed. Mr Benson ventured on the bold innova- 
tion of giving the play in fuU.^ 

Only he who has witnessed the whole play on the 
stage can fully appreciate its dramatic capabilities. 
It is obvious that, in whatever shape the play of 
Hamlet is produced in the theatre, its success must 
always be primarily due to the overpowering fascin- 
ation exerted on the audience by the character of 
the hero. In every conceivable circumstance the 
young prince must be the centre of attraction. 
Nevertheless, no graver injury can be done the play 
as an acting drama than by treating it as a one-part 
piece. The accepted method of shortening the 
tragedy by reducing every part, except that of 
Hamlet, is to distort Shakespeare's whole scheme, 
to dislocate or obscure the whole action. The pre- 
dominance of Hamlet is exaggerated at the expense 
of the dramatist's artistic purpose. 

^ The performance occupied nearly six hours. One half was 
given in the afternoon, and the other half in the evening of the 
same day, with an interval of an hour and a half between the 
two sections. Should the performance be repeated, I would rec- 
ommend, in the interests of busy men and women, that the whole 
play be rendered at a single sitting, which might be timed to 
open at a somewhat earlier hour in the evening than is now 
customary, and might, if need be, close a little later. There 
should be no difficulty in restricting the hours occupied by the 
performance to four and a half. 



118 MR BENSON AND SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA 

To realise completely the motives of Hamlet's 
conduct, and the process of his fortunes, not a single 
utterance from the lips of the King, Polonius, or 
Laertes can be spared. In ordinary acting versions 
these three parts sink into insignificance. It is 
only in the full text that they assume their just 
and illuminating rank as Hamlet's foils. 

The King rises into a character almost of the first 
class. He is a villain of unfathomable infamy, but 
his cowardly fear of the discovery of his crimes, his 
desperate pursuit of the consolations of religion, the 
quick ingenuity with which he plots escape from the 
inevitable retribution that dogs his misdeeds, excite 
— in the full text of the play — an interest hardly less 
intense than those wistful musings of the storm- 
tossed soul which stay his nephew's avenging hand. 

Similarly, Hamlet's incisive wit and honesty are 
brought into the highest possible relief bj^ the 
restoration to the feebly guileful Polonius of the 
speeches of which he has long been deprived. 
Among the reinstated scenes is that in which the 
meddlesome dotard teaches his servant Reynaldo 
modes of espionage that shall detect the moral lapses 
of his son Laertes in Paris. The recovered episode 
is not only admirable comedy, but it gives new 
vividness to Polonius 's maudhn egotism which is 
responsible for many windings of the tragic plot. 

The story is simplified at all points by such 
amplifications of the contracted version which holds 
the stage. The events are evolved with unsuspected 
naturalness. The hero's character gains by the ex- 
pansion of its setting. One downright error which 
infects the standard abridgement is wholly avoided. 
Ophelia is dethroned. It is recognised that she is 



A SCHOOL FOR ACTORS 119 

not entitled to share with Hamlet the triumphal 
honours of the action. Weak, insipid, destitute of 
all force of character, she deserves an insignificant 
place in Shakespeare's gallery of heroines. Hamlet's 
mother merits as much or more attention. At any 
rate, there is no justification for reducing the Queen's 
part in order to increase Ophelia's prominence. Such 
distortions are impossible in the production of the 
piece in its entirety. Throughout Hamlet, in the full 
authorised text, the artistic balance hangs true. 
Mr Benson recognised that dominant fact, and con- 
trived to illustrate it on the stage. No higher 
commendation could be allowed a theatrical mana- 
ger or actor. 

IV 

Much else could be said of Mr Benson's princi- 
ples, and of his praiseworthy energy in seeking to 
familiarise the playgoer with Shakespearean drama 
in all its fulness and variety, but only one other 
specific feature of his method needs mention here. 
Perhaps the most convincing proof that he has given 
of the value of his principles to the country's dramatic 
art is his success in the training of actors and 
actresses. Of late it is his company that has sup- 
plied the great London actor-managers with their 
ablest recruits. Nearly all the best performers of 
secondary roles and a few of the best performers of 
primary roles in the leading London theatres are Mr 
Benson's pupils. Their admission to the great Lon- 
don companies is raising the standard of acting in 
the MetropoHs. The marked efficiency of these new- 
comers is due to a system which is inconsistent 



120 MR BENSON AND SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA 

with any of the accepted principles of current 
theatrical enterprise in London. Mr Benson's dis- 
ciples mainly owe their efficiency to long asso- 
ciation with a permanent company controlled by a 
manager who seeks, single-mindedly, what he holds 
to be the interests of dramatic art. The many- 
headed public learns its lessons very slowly, and 
sometimes neglects them altogether. It has been 
reluctant to recognise the true significance of Mr 
Benson's work. But the intelligent onlooker knows 
that he is marching along the right road, in intelHgent 
conformity with the best teaching of the past. 

Thirty years ago a meeting took place at the 
Mansion House to discuss the feasibiHty of founding 
a State theatre in London, a project which was 
not realised. The most memorable incident which 
was associated with the Mansion House meeting was 
a speech of the theatrical manager Phelps, who 
argued, amid the enthusiastic plaudits of his hearers, 
that it was in the highest interests of the nation 
that the Shakespearean drama should continuously 
occupy the stage. ''I maintain," Phelps said, ''from 
the experience of eighteen years, that the perpetual 
iteration of Shakespeare's words, if nothing more, 
going on daily for so many months of the year, must 
and would produce a great effect upon the public 
mind." No man or woman of sense will to-day 
gainsay the wisdom of this utterance; but it is need- 
ful for the public to make greater exertion than they 
have made of late if ''the perpetual iteration of 
Shakespeare's words" in the theatre is to be per- 
manently secured. 

Mr Benson's efforts constitute the best organised 
endeavour to reahse Phelps's ambition since Phelps 



MR BENSON'S SERVICE TO SHAKESPEARE 121 

withdrew from management. Mr Benson's scheme 
is imperfect in some of its details; in other particulars 
it may need revision. But he and his associates 
have planted their feet firmly on sure ground in their 
endeavours to interpret Shakespearean drama con- 
stantly and in its variety, after a wise and well- 
considered system and with a disinterested zeal. 
When every allowance has been made for the Ben- 
son Company's shortcomings, its achievement can- 
not be denied "sl relish of salvation." Mr Benson 
deserves well of those who have faith in the power 
of Shakespeare's words to widen the horizon of 
men's intellects and emotions. The seed he has 
sown should not be suffered to decay. 



VI 

THE MUNICIPAL THEATRE i 

I 

Many actors, dramatic critics, and men in public life 
advocate the municipal manner of theatrical enter- 
prise. Their aim, as I understand it, is to procure 
the erection, and the due working, of a playhouse 
that shall serve in permanence the best interests 
of the literary or artistic drama. The municipal 
theatre is not worth fighting for, unless there is a 
reasonable probability that its establishment will 
benefit dramatic art, promote the knowledge of 
dramatic literature, and draw from the literary 
drama and confer on the public the largest bene- 
ficial influence which the literary drama is capable of 
distributing. 

None of Shakespeare's countrymen or country- 
women can deny with a good grace the importance of 
the drama as a branch of art. None will seriously 
dispute that our dramatic literature, at any rate in 
its loftiest manifestation, has contributed as much 
as our armies or our navies or our mechanical in- 
ventions to our reputation through the world. 

There is substantial agreement among enlight- 
ened leaders of public opinion in all civiUsed coun- 

^ This paper was first printed in the New Liberal Review, 
May, 1902. 
122 



LITERARY DRAMA ON THE MODERN STAGE 123 

tries that great drama, when fitly represented in 
the theatre, offers the rank and file of a nation 
recreation which brings with it moral, intellectual, 
and spiritual advantage. 

II 

The first question to consider is whether in Eng- 
land the existing theatrical agencies promote for the 
general good the genuine interests of dramatic art. 
Do existing theatrical agencies secure for the nation 
all the beneficial influence that is derivable from the 
truly competent form of drama? If they do this 
sufficiently, it is otiose and impertinent to entertain 
the notion of creating any new theatrical agency. 

Theatrical agencies of the existing type have 
never ignored the Uterary drama altogether. Among 
actor-managers of the past generation, Sir Henry 
Irving devoted his high abihty to the interpretation 
of many species of literary drama — from that by 
Shakespeare to that by Tennyson. At leading 
theatres in London there have been produced in the 
last few years poetic dramas written in blank verse 
on themes drawn from such supreme examples of 
the world's Hterature as Homer's Odyssey and 
Dante's Inferno. Signs have not been wanting of 
pubHc anxiety to acknowledge with generosity these 
and other serious endeavours in poetic drama, what- 
ever their precise degree of excellence. But such 
premisses warrant no very large conclusion. Two 
or three swallows do not make a summer. The 
literary drama is only welcomed to the London stage 
at uncertain internals; most of its life is passed in 
the wilderness. 



124 THE MUNICIPAL THEATRE 

The recognition that is given in England to 
literary or poetic drama, alike of the past and 
present, is chiefly notable for its irregularity. The 
circumstance may be accounted for in various ways. 
It is best explained by the fact that England is 
the only country in Europe in which theatrical 
enterprise is wholly and exclusively organised on a 
capitaHst basis. No theatre in England is worked 
to-day on any but the capitalist principle. Artistic 
aspiration may be well ahve in the theatrical pro- 
fession, but the custom and circumstance of capital, 
the calls of the counting-house, hamper the theatrical 
artist's freedom of action. The methods imposed 
are dictated too exclusively by the mercantile spirit. 

Many illustrations could be given of the unceasing 
conflict which capitalist methods wage with artistic 
methods. One is sufficient. The commercially cap- 
itaUsed theatre is bound hand and foot to the system 
of long runs. In no theatres of the first class out- 
side London and New York is the system known, 
and even here and in New York it is of comparative- 
ly recent origin. But Londoners have grown so 
accustomed to the system that they overlook the 
havoc which it works on the theatre as a home of 
art. Both actor and playgoer suffer signal injury 
from its effects. It Hmits the range of drama which 
is available at our great theatres to the rank and 
file of mankind. Especially serious is the danger 
to which the unchangeable programme exposes 
histrionic capacity and histrionic intelHgence. The 
actor is not encouraged to widen his knowledge of 
the drama. His faculties are blunted by the narrow 
monotony of his experience. Yet the capitalised 
conditions of theatrical enterprise, which are in 



THE ACTOR-MANAGER 125 

vogue in London and New York, seem to render 
long runs imperative. The system of long runs is 
peculiar to English-speaking countries, where alone 
theatrical enterprise is altogether under the sway of 
capital. It is specifically prohibited in the national 
or municipal theatre of every great foreign city, 
where the interests of dramatic art enjoy foremost 
consideration. 

The artistic aspiration of the actor-manager may 
be set on the opposite side of the account. Although 
the actor-man^iger belongs to the ranks of the capi- 
talists (whether he be one himself or dependent on 
one), yet when he exercises supreme control of his 
playhouse, and is moved by artistic feeling, he may 
check many of the evils that spring from capitalist 
domination. He can partially neutralise the ham- 
pering effect on dramatic art of the merely com- 
mercial application of capital to theatrical enterprise. 

The actor-manager system is liable to impede 
the progress of dramatic art through defects of 
its own, but its most characteristic defects are not 
tarred with the capitalist brush. The actor-mana- 
ger is prone to over-estimate the range of his his- 
trionic power. He tends to claim of right the first 
place in the cast of every piece which he produces. 
He will consequently at times fill a role for which his 
powers unsuit him. If he be wise enough to avoid 
that error, he may imperil the interests of dramatic 
art in another fashion; he may neglect pieces, despite 
their artistic value, in which he knows the fore- 
most part to be outside his scope. The actor- 
manager has sometimes undertaken a secondary 
role. But then it often happens, not necessarily by 
his deliberate endeavour, but by the mere force and 



126 THE MUNICIPAL THEATRE 

popularity of his name among the frequenters of his 
playhouse, that there is focussed on his secondary 
part an attention that it does not intrinsically merit, 
with the result that the artistic perspective of the 
play is injured. A primary law of dramatic art 
deprecates the constant preponderance of one actor 
in a company. The highest attainable level of ex- 
cellence in all the members is the true artistic aim. 

The dangers inherent in the ''star" principle of 
the actor-manager system may be frankly admitted, 
but at the same time one should recognise the 
system's possible advantages. An actor-manager 
does not usually arrive at his position until his 
career is well advanced and he has proved his 
histrionic capacity. Versatility commonly distin- 
guishes him, and he is able to fill a long series of 
leading roles without violating artistic propriety. 
At any rate, the actor-manager who resolutely 
cherishes respect for art can do much to temper 
the corrupting influences of commercial capitalism 
in the theatrical world. 

It is probably the less needful to scrutinise 
closely the theoretic merits or demerits of the actor- 
manager system, because the dominant principle of 
current theatrical enterprise in London and America 
renders most precarious the future existence of that 
system. The actor-manager seems, at any rate, 
threatened in London by a new and irresistible 
tide of capitalist energy. Six or seven leading 
theatres in London have recently been brought under 
the control of an American capitalist who does 
not pretend to any but mercantile inspiration. The 
American capitalist's first and last aim is naturally 
to secure the highest possible remuneration for his 



THE AMERICAN CAPITALIST 127 

invested capital. He is catholic-minded, and has 
no objection to artistic drama, provided he can 
draw substantial profit from it. Material interests 
alone have any real meaning for him. If he serve 
the interests of art by producing an artistic play, 
he serves art by accident and unconsciously: his 
object is to benefit his exchequer. His philosophy 
is unmitigated utilitarianism. ''The greatest pleas- 
ure for the greatest number" is his motto. The 
pleasure that carries farthest and brings round him 
the largest paying audiences is his ideal stock-in- 
trade. Obviously pleasure either of the frivolous or 
of the spectacular kind attracts the greatest number 
of customers to his emporium. It is consequently 
pleasure of this spectacular or frivolous kind which 
he habitually endeavours to provide. It is Quixotic 
to anticipate much diminution in the supply and 
demand of either frivohty or spectacle, both of 
which may furnish quite innocuous pleasure. But 
each is the antithesis of dramatic art; and whatever 
view one holds of the methods of the American 
capitalist, it is irrational to look to him for the in- 
telligent promotion of dramatic art. 

in 

From the artistic point of view the modern 
system of theatrical enterprise thus seems capable 
of improvement. If it be incapable of general im- 
provement, it is at least capable of having a better 
example set it than current modes can be reckoned 
on to offer. The latter are not Hkely to be dis- 
placed. All that can be attempted is to create a 
new model at their side. What is sought by the 
advocates of a municipal theatre is an institution 



128 THE MUNICIPAL THEATRE 

which shall maintain in permanence a high artistic 
ideal of drama, and shall give the pubhc the oppor- 
tunity of permanently honouring that ideal. Ex- 
isting theatres whose programmes ignore art would 
be unaffected by such a new neighbour. But ex- 
isting enterprises, which, as far as present conditions 
permit, reflect artistic aspiration, would derive from 
such an institution new and steady encouragement. 

The interests of dramatic art can only be served 
whole-heartedly in a theatre organised on two prin- 
ciples which have hitherto been unrecognised in 
England. In the first place, the management should 
acknowledge some sort of pubhc obligation to make 
the interests of dramatic art its first motive of action. 
In the second place, the management should be 
relieved of the need of seeking unrestricted com- 
mercial profits for the capital that is invested in the 
venture. Both principles have been adopted with 
successful results in Continental cities; but their 
successful practice imphes the acceptance by the 
State, or by a permanent local authority, of a certain 
amount of responsibiUty in both the artistic and 
the financial directions. 

It is foolish to blind oneself to commercial con- 
siderations altogether. When the municipal theatre 
is freed of the unimaginative control of private capi- 
tal seeking unlimited profit, it is still wise to require 
a moderate return on the expended outlay. The 
municipal theatre can only live healthily in the 
presence of a public desire or demand for it, and that 
pubhc desire or demand can only be measured by the 
playhouse receipts. A municipal theatre would not 
be satisfactorily conducted if money were merely lost 
in it, or spent on it without any thought of the like- 



THE DEMAND FOR A MUNICIPAL THEATRE 129 

lihood of the expenditure proving remunerative. 
Profits need never be refused; but all above a fixed 
minimum rate of interest on the invested capital 
should be applied to the promotion of those pur- 
poses which the municipal theatre primarily exists 
to serve — to cheapen, for example, prices of ad- 
mission, or to improve the general mechanism behind 
and before the scenes. No surplus profits should 
reach the pocket of any individual manager or 
financier. 

IV 

There is in England a demand and desire on the 
part of a substantial section of the public for this 
new form of theatrical enterprise, although its pre- 
cise dimensions may not be absolutely determinable. 
The question is thereby adapted for practical dis- 
cussion. The demand and desire have as yet 
received inadequate recognition, because they have 
not been satisfactorily organised or concentrated. 
The trend of an appreciable section of public opinion 
in the direction of a limited municipalisation of 
the theatre is visible in many places. Firstly, one 
must take into accoxmt the number of small societies 
which have been formed of late by enthusiasts for 
the exclusive promotion of one or other specific 
branch of the Hterary drama — the Elizabethan 
drama, the Norwegian drama, the German drama. 
Conspicuous success has been denied these societies 
because their leaders tend to assert narrow sectional 
views of the bases of dramatic art, or they lack the 
preliminary training and the influence which are 
essential to the efficient conduct of any public enter- 
prise. Many of their experiences offer useful object- 



130 THE MUNICIPAL THEATRE 

lessons as to the defects inherent in all narrow sec- 
tional effort, however enthusiastically inspired. But 
at the same time they testify to a desire to introduce 
into the current theatrical system more literary and 
artistic principles than are at present habitual to 
it. They point to the presence of a zeal — often, it 
may be, misdirected — for change or reform. 

The experiment of Mr Benson points more 
effectively in the same direction. A public-spirited 
champion of Shakespeare and the classical drama, 
he has maintained his hold in the chief cities of 
Ireland, Scotland, and the English provinces for a 
generation. Although for reasons that are not hard 
to seek, he has failed to establish his position in 
London, Mr Benson's methods of work have en- 
abled him to render conspicuous service to the 
London stage in a manner which is likely to facilitate 
reform. For many years he has supplied the lead- 
ing London theatres with a succession of trained 
actors and actresses. Graduates in Mr Benson's 
school can hardly fail to co-operate willingly in any 
reform of theatrical enterprise, which is calculated 
to develop the artistic capacities of the stage. 

Other circumstances are no less promising. The 
justice of the cry for the due safeguarding of the 
country's dramatic art by means of pubUcly-organ- 
ised effort has been repeatedly acknowledged of late 
by men of experience alike in dramatic and public 
affairs. In 1898 a petition was presented to the 
London County Council requesting that body to 
found and endow a permanent opera-house ^'in order 
to promote the musical interest and refinement of 
the public and the advancement of the art of music." 
The petition bore the signatures of two hundred 



THE TREND OF PUBLIC OPINION 131 

leaders of public opinion, including the chief mem- 
bers of the dramatic profession. In this important 
document, particulars were given of the manner in 
which the State or the municipaUty aided theatres 
in France, Germany, Austria, and other countries 
of Europe. It was shown that in France twelve 
typically efficient theatres received from public bod- 
ies an annual subsidy amounting in the aggregate 
to £130,000. 

The wording of the petition and the arguments 
employed by the petitioners were applicable to 
drama as well as to opera. In fact the case was 
put in a way which was more favourable to the 
pretensions of drama than to those of opera. One 
argument which always tells against the establish- 
ment of a pubHcly-subsidised opera-house in London 
does not affect the establishment of a publicly-sub- 
sidised theatre. Opera is an exotic in England; 
drama is a native product, and has exerted in the 
past a wider influence and has attracted a wider 
sjonpathy than Italian or German music. 

The London County Council, after careful in- 
quiry, gave the scheme of 1898 benevolent encour- 
agement. Hope was held out that a site for either 
a theatre or an opera-house, might be reserved '' in 
connection with one of the contemplated central 
improvements of London." Nothing in the recent 
history of the London County Council gives ground 
for doubting that it will be prepared to give prac- 
tical effect to a thoroughly matured scheme. 

Within the Council the principle of the munici- 
pal theatre has found powerful advocacy. Mr John 
Burns, who is not merely the spokesman of the 
working classes, but is a representative of earnest- 



132 THE MUNICIPAL THEATRE 

minded students of good literature, has supported 
the principle with generous enthusiasm. The in- 
telligent artisans of London applaud his attitude. 
The London Trades Council passed resolutions in 
the autumn of 1901 recommending the erection of a 
theatre by the London County Council, ''so that a 
higher standard of dramatic art might be encouraged 
and made more accessible to the wage-earning classes 
as is the case in the State and municipal theatres 
in the principal cities on the Continent. '^ The gist 
of the argument could hardly be put more plainly. 

Of those who have written recently in favour of 
the scheme of a municipal theatre many speak with 
the authority of exceptional experience. The actor 
Mr John Coleman, one of the last survivors of 
Phelps's company at Sadler's Wells Theatre, argued 
with cogency, shortly before his death in 1903, that 
the national credit owed it to itself to renew Phelps's 
experiment of the middle of last century; pubHc 
intervention was imperative, seeing that no other 
means were forthcoming. The late Sir Henry Irving 
in his closing years announced his conviction that 
a municipal theatre could alone keep the classical 
and the poetic drama fully ahve in the theatres. 
The dramatic critic, Mr William Archer, has brought 
his expert knowledge of dramatic organisation at 
home and abroad to the aid of the agitation. Vari- 
ous proposals — unhappily of too vague and un- 
authoritative a kind to guarantee a satisfactory 
reception — have been made from time to time to 
raise a fund to build a national theatre, and to run it 
for five years on a pubHc subsidy of £10,000 a year. 

The advocates of the municipahsing principle 
have worked for the most part in isolation. Such 



STATE-PROVIDED ENLIGHTENMENT 133 

independence tends to dissipate rather than to con- 
serve energy. A consolidating impulse has been 
sorely needed. But the variety of the points of 
views from which the subject has been independently 
approached renders the less disputable the genuine 
width of public interest in the question. 

The argument that it is contrary to pubHc policy, 
or that it is opposed to the duty of the State or 
municipality, to provide for the people's enlightened 
amusement, is not formidable. The State and the 
municipahty have long treated such work as part of 
their daily functions, whatever the arguments that 
have been urged against it. The State, in partner- 
ship with local authorities, educates the people, 
whether they like it or no. The municipalities of 
London and other great towns provide the people, 
outside the theatre, with almost every opportunity 
of enlightenment and enlightened amusement. In 
London there are 150 free libraries, which are mainly 
occupied in providing the ratepayers with the oppor- 
tunities of reading fiction — recreation which is not 
always very enlightened. The County Council of 
London furnishes bands of music to play in the parks, 
at an expenditure of some £6000 a year. Most of 
our great cities supply, in addition, municipal picture 
galleries, in which the citizens take pride, and to 
which in their corporate capacity they contribute 
large sums of money. The municipal theatre is the 
natural complement of the municipal library, the 
municipal musical entertainment, and the municipal 
art gallery. 



134 THE MUNICIPAL THEATRE 

V 

Of the practicability of a municipal theatre ample 
evidence is at hand. Foreign experience convinc- 
ingly justifies the municipal mode of theatrical en- 
terprise. Every great town in France, Germany, 
Austria, and Switzerland has its municipal theatre. 
In Paris there are three, in addition to four theatres 
which are subsidised by the State. It is estimated 
that there are seventy municipal theatres in the 
German-speaking countries of Europe, apart from 
twenty-seven State theatres. At the same time, it 
should be noted that in the French and German 
capitals there are, at the side of the State and 
municipal playhouses, numerous theatres which are 
run on ordinary commercial lines. The prosperity of 
these houses is in no way checked by the contigu- 
ity of theatrical enterprise of State or municipality. 

All municipal theatres on the continent of Europe 
pursue the same aims. They strive to supply the 
citizens with true artistic drama continuously, and 
to reduce the cost of admission to the playhouse to 
the lowest possible terms. But the working details 
of the foreign municipal theatres differ widely in 
individual cases, and a municipality which con- 
templates a first theatrical experiment is offered a 
large choice of method. In some places the munici- 
pality acts with regal munificence, and directly 
assumes the largest possible responsibihties. It 
provides the site, erects the theatre, and allots a 
substantial subsidy to its maintenance. The mana- 
ger is a municipal officer, and the municipal theatre 
fills in the social life of the town as imposing a place 
as the town-hall, cathedral, or university. 



CHOICE OF METHOD 135 

Elsewhere the municipality sets narrower Hmits 
to its sphere of operations. It merely provides the 
site and the building, and then lets the playhouse out 
at a moderate rental to directors of proved efficiency 
and public spirit, on assured conditions that they 
honestly serve the true interests of art, uphold a 
high standard of production, avoid the frivohty and 
spectacle of the market, and fix the price of seats 
on a very low scale. Here no pubHc funds are seri- 
ously involved. The municipality pays no subsidy. 
The rent of the theatre suppHes the municipahty 
with normal interest on the capital that is invested 
in site and building. It is pubUc credit of a moral 
rather than of a material kind which is pledged to 
the cause of dramatic art. 

In a third class of municipal theatre the pubHc 
body conj&nes its material aid to the gratuitous provi- 
sion of a site. Upon that site private enterprise is 
invited to erect a theatre under adequate guarantee 
that it shall exclusively respect the purposes of art, 
and spare to the utmost the pockets of the play- 
goer. To render dramatic art accessible to the rank 
and file of mankind, with the smallest possible 
pressure on the individual citizen's private re- 
sources, is of the essence of every form of munici- 
pal theatrical enterprise. 

The net result of the municipal theatre, especially 
in German-speaking countries, is that the literary 
drama, both of the past and present, maintains a grip 
on the playgoing pubfic which is outside EngUsh 
experience. There is in Germany a very flourishing 
modern German drama of literary merit. Suder- 
mann and Hauptmann hold the ears of men of let- 
ters throughout Europe. Dramas by these authors 



136 THE MUNICIPAL THEATRE 

are constantly presented in municipal theatres. 
At the same time, plays by the classical dramatists 
of all European countries are performed as con- 
stantly, and are no less popular. Almost every play 
of Shakespeare is in the repertory of the chief 
acting companies on the German municipal stage. 
At the side of Shakespeare stand Schiller and Goethe 
and Lessing, the classical dramatists of Germany; 
Moliere, the classical dramatist of France; and 
Calderon, the classical dramatist of Spain. Public 
interest is liberally distributed over the whole range 
of artistic dramatic effort. Indeed, during recent 
years, Shakespeare's plays have been performed in 
Germany more often than plays of the modern Ger- 
man school. Schiller, the classical national drama- 
tist of Germany, lives more conspicuously on the 
modern German stage than any one modern German 
contemporary writer, eminent and popular as more 
than one contemporary German dramatist deserved- 
ly is. Thus signally has the national or municipal 
system of theatrical enterprise in Germany served 
the cause of classical drama. All the beneficial in- 
fluence and gratification, which are inherent in ar- 
tistic and literary drama, are, under the national 
or municipal system, enjoyed in permanence and 
security by the German people. 

Vienna probably offers London the most in- 
structive example of the national or municipal 
theatre. The three leading Viennese playhouses — 
the Burg-Theater, the Stadt-Theater, and the Volks- 
Theater — illustrate the three modes in which public 
credit may be pledged to theatrical enterprise. The 
palatial Burg-Theater is wholly an institution of the 
State. The site of the Stadt-Theater, and to a 



THE EXAMPLE OF VIENNA 137 

large extent the building, were provided by the 
municipahty, which thereupon leased them out to a 
private syndicate, under a manager of the syndicate's 
choosing. The municipality assumes no more direct 
responsibility for the due devotion of the Stadt- 
Theater to dramatic art than is implied in its reten- 
tion of reversionary rights of ownership. The third 
theatre, the Volks-Theater, illustrates the minimum 
share that a municipality may take in promoting 
theatrical enterprise, while guaranteeing the welfare 
of artistic drama. 

The success of the Volks-Theater is due to the 
co-operation of a public body with a voluntary 
society of private citizens who regard the main- 
tenance of the literary drama as a civic duty. The 
site of the Volks-Theater, which was formerly public 
property and estimated to be worth £80,000, is in 
the best part of the city of Vienna. It was a free 
gift from the government to a Umited liability com- 
pany, formed of some four hundred shareholders of 
moderate means, who formally pledged themselves 
to erect on the land a theatre with the sole object of 
serving the purposes of dramatic art. The interest 
payable to shareholders is strictly Umited by the 
conditions of association. An officially sanctioned 
constitution renders it obligatory on them and on 
their officers to produce in the playhouse classical 
and modern drama of a Hterary character, though 
not necessarily of the severest type. Merely frivolous 
or spectacular pieces are prohibited, and at least 
twice a week purely classical plays must be pre- 
sented. No piece may be played more than two 
nights in immediate succession. The actors, whose 
engagements are permanent, are substantially paid, 



138 THE MUNICIPAL THEATRE 

and an admirably devised system of pensions is 
enforced without making deductions from salaries. 
The price of seats is fixed at a low rate, the highest 
price being 4s., the cheapest and most numerous 
seats costing lOd. each. Both financially and ar- 
tistically the result has been all that one could 
wish. There is no public subsidy, but the Emperor 
pays £500 a year for a box. The house holds 1800 
persons, yielding gross receipts of £200 for a nightly 
expenditure of £125. There are no advertising ex- 
penses, no posters. The newspapers give notice of 
the daily programme as an attractive item of news. 

VI 

There is some disinclination among EngUshmen 
deliberately to adopt foreign methods, to follow 
foreign examples, in any walk of Ufe. But no per- 
son of common sense will reject a method merely 
because it is foreign, if it can be proved to be of 
utility. It is spurious patriotism to reject wise 
counsel because it is no native product. On the 
other hand, it is seriously to asperse the culture and 
intelligence of the British nation to assume that no 
appreciable section of it cherishes that taste for the 
hterary drama which keeps the national or municipal 
theatre alive in France and Germany. At any rate, 
judgment should be held in suspense until the British 
playgoers' mettle has been more thoroughly tested 
than hitherto. 

No less humiliating is the argument that the art 
of acting in this country is at too low an ebb to justify 
the assumption by a public body of responsibiUty 
for theatrical enterprise. One or two critics assert 



THE TRAINING OF ACTORS 139 

that to involve public credit in a theatre, until there 
exist an efficient school of acting, is to put the cart 
before the horse. This objection seems insubstantial. 
Competent actors are not altogether absent from the 
English stage, and the municipal system of theatrical 
enterprise is calculated to increase their number 
rapidly. 

Abroad, the subsidised theatres, with their just 
schemes of salary, their permanent engagements, 
their well-devised pension systems, attract the best 
class of the profession. A competent company of 
actors, which enjoys a permanent home and is 
governed by high standards of art, forms the best 
possible school of acting, not merely by force of 
example, but by the private tuition which it could 
readily provide. In Vienna the companies at the 
subsidised theatres are recruited from the pupils 
of a State-endowed conservatoire of actors. It is 
improbable that the British Government will found 
a like institution. But it would be easy to attach 
a college of acting to the municipal theatre, and to 
make the college pay its way. 

Much depends on the choice of manager of the 
enterprise. The manager of a municipal theatre 
must combine with business aptitude a genuine 
devotion to dramatic art and dramatic literature. 
Without a fit manager, who can collect and control 
a competent company of actors, the scheme of the 
municipal theatre is doomed to failure. Managers 
of the requisite temper, knowledge, and ability are 
not lacking in France or Germany. There is no 
reason to anticipate that, when the call is sounded, 
the right response will not be given here. 

Cannot an experiment be made in London on 



140 THE MUNICIPAL THEATRE 

the lines of the Vienna Volks-Theater? In the first 
place, it is needful to bring together a body of citizens 
who, under leadership which commands public con- 
fidence, will undertake to build and control for a 
certain term of years a theatre of suitable design 
in the interests of dramatic art, on conditions sim- 
ilar to those that have worked with success in Ber- 
lin, Paris, and notably Vienna. Then the London 
County Council after the professions it has made, 
might be reasonably expected to undertake so much 
responsibility for the proper conduct of the new 
playhouse as would be implied by its provision of 
a site. If the experiment failed, no one would be 
much the worse; if it succeeded, as it ought to suc- 
ceed, the nation would gain in repute for intelligence, 
culture, and enlightened patriotism; it would rid 
itself of the reproach that it pays smaller and less 
intelligent regard to Shakespeare and the literary 
drama than France, Germany, Austria, or Italy. 

Phelps's single-handed effort brought the people 
of London for eighteen years face to face with the 
great English drama at his playhouse at Sadler's 
Wells. ''I made that enterprise pay," he said, after 
he retired; ''not making a fortune certainly, but 
bringing up a large family and paying my way." 
Private troubles and illness compelled him suddenly 
to abandon the enterprise at the end of eighteen 
years, when there happened to be none at hand to 
take his place of leader. All that was wanting to 
make his enterprise permanent, he declared, was 
some public control, some public acknowledgment of 
responsibihty which, without impeding the efficient 
manager's freedom of action, would cause his post to 
be properly filled in case of an accidental vacancy. 



PHELPS ON PUBLIC CONTROL 141 

Phelps thought that if he could do so much during 
eighteen years by his personal, isolated, and inde- 
pendent endeavour, much more could be done in per- 
manence under some public method of safeguard and 
guarantee. Phelps's services to the Uterary drama 
can hardly be over-estimated. His mature judg- 
ment is not to be lightly gainsaid. It is just to his 
memory to put his faith to a practical test. 



VII 

ASPECTS OF SHAKESPEARE'S 
PHILOSOPHY 1 



A French critic once remarked that a whole system 
of philosophy could be deduced from Shakespeare's 
pages, though from all the works of the philosophers 
one could not draw a page of Shakespeare. The 
second statement — the denial of the presence of a 
page of Shakespeare in the works of all the phi- 
losophers — is more accurate than the assertion that 
a system of philosophy could be deduced from the 
plays of Shakespeare. It is hopeless to deduce any 
precise system of philosophy from Shakespeare's 
plays. Literally, philosophy means nothing more 
recondite than love of wisdom. Technically, it 
means scientifically restrained speculation about the 
causes of human thought and conduct; it embraces 
the sciences of logic, of ethics, of poUtics, of psychol- 
ogy, of metaphysics. Shakespeare's training and 
temper unfitted him to make any professed con- 
tribution to any of these topics. 

Ignorant persons argue on hazy grounds that 
the great avowed philosopher of Shakespeare's day, 

^ This paper, which was originally prepared in 1899 for the 
purposes of a popular lecture, is here printed for the first time. 
142 



BACON'S PHILOSOPHICAL METHOD 143 

Francis Bacon, wrote Shakespeare's plays. There is 
no need to confute the theory, which confutes itself. 
But, if a confutation were needed, it Hes on the sur- 
face in the conflicting attitudes which Shakespeare 
and Bacon assume towards philosophy. There is 
no mistaking Bacon's attitude. The supreme aim 
of his writings was to establish the practical value, 
the majestic importance, of philosophy in its strict 
sense of speculative science. He sought to widen 
its scope and to multiply the ranks of its students. 

Bacon's method is formally philosophic in texture. 
He carefully scrutinises, illustrates, seeks to justify 
each statement before proceeding to a conclusion. 
Every essay, every treatise of Bacon, conveys the im- 
pression not merely of weighty, pregnant eloquence, 
but of the argumentative and philosophic temper. 
Bacon's process of thinking is conscious : it is visible 
behind the words. The argument progresses with 
a cumulative force. It draws sustenance from the 
recorded opinions of others. The points usually 
owe consistency and firmness to quotations from old 
authors — Greek and Latin authors, especially Plato 
and Plutarch, Lucretius and Seneca. To Bacon, as 
to all professed students of the subject, philosophy 
first revealed itself in the pages of the Greek writers 
Plato and Aristotle, the founders for modern Europe 
of the speculative sciences of human thought and 
conduct. Greatly as Bacon modified the Greek 
system of philosophy, he began his philosophic career 
under the influence of Aristotle, and, despite his de- 
structive criticism of his master, he never wholly 
divested himself of the methods of exposition to 
which the Greek philosopher's teaching introduced 
him. 



144 ASPECTS OF SHAKESPEARE'S PHILOSOPHY 

In their attitudes to philosophy, Shakespeare 
and Bacon are as the poles asunder. Shakespeare 
practically ignores the existence of philosophy as a 
formal science. He betrays no knowledge of its 
Greek origin and developments. 

There are two short, slight, conventional men- 
tions of Aristotle's name in Shakespeare's works. 
One is a very slight allusion to Aristotle's '^ checks" 
or ''moral discipline" in The Taming of the Shrew. 
That passage is probably from a coadjutor's pen. 
In any case it is merely a playful questioning of the 
title of ''sweet philosophy" to monopoHze a young 
man's education. ^ 

The other mention of Aristotle is in Troilus 
and Cressida, and raises points of greater interest. 
Hector scornfully likens his brothers Troilus and 
Paris, when they urge persistence in the strife with 
Greece, to "young men whom Aristotle thought un- 
fit to hear moral philosophy" (II. 2, 166). The 
words present the meaning, but not the language, 
of a sentence in Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics" 
(i. 8). Aristotle there declares passionate youth to 
be unfitted to study political philosophy; he makes 
no mention of moral philosophy. The change of 
epithet does, however, no injustice to Aristotle's 
argument. His context makes it plain, that by 

^ Tranio, the attendant on the young Pisan, Lucentio, who 
has come to Padua to study at the university, counsels his master 
to widen the field of his studies: — 

Only, good master, while we do admire 
This virtue and this moral discipline. 
Let's be no Stoics, nor no stocks, I pray. 
Or so devote to Aristotle's checks, 
As Ovid be an outcast quite adjured. 

— The Taming of the Shrew, i. 2, 29-33. 



SHAKESPEARE AND ARISTOTLE 145 

political philosophy he means the ethics of civil 
society, which are hardly distinguishable from what 
is commonly called ''morals." The maxim, in the 
slightly irregular shape which Shakespeare adopted, 
enjoyed proverbial currency before the dramatist 
was born. Erasmus introduced it in this form into 
his far-famed Colloquies. In France and Italy the 
warning against instructing youth in moral philos- 
ophy was popularly accepted as an Aristotelian in- 
junction. Sceptics about the obvious Shakespearean 
tradition have made much of the circumstance that 
Bacon, who cited the aphorism from Aristotle in his 
Advancement of Learning, substituted, Uke Shake- 
speare in Troilus and Cressida, the epithet ''moral" 
for "political." The proverbial currency of the 
emendation deprives the coincidence of point. 

The repetition of a proverbial phrase, indirectly 
drawn from Aristotle, combined with the absence of 
other references to the Greek philosopher, renders 
improbable Shakespeare's personal acquaintance 
with his work. In any case, the bare mention of 
the name of Aristotle implies nothing in this con- 
nection. It was a popular synonym for ancient 
learning. It was as often on the lips of EUzabethans 
as Bacon's name is on the lips of men and women of 
to-day, and it would be rash to infer that those who 
carelessly and casually mentioned Bacon's name to- 
day knew Bacon's writings or philosophic theories 
at first hand. 

No evidence is forthcoming that Shakespeare 
knew in any soHd sense aught of philosophy of the 
formal scientific kind. On scientific philosophy, and 
on natural science, Shakespeare probably looked 
with suspicion. He expressed no high opinion of 



146 ASPECTS OF SHAKESPEARE'S PHILOSOPHY 

astronomers, who pursue the most imposing of all 
branches of scientific speculation. 

Small have continual plodders ever won, 

Save base authority from others' books. 

These earthly godfathers of heaven's light, 

That give a name to every fixed star. 

Have no more profit of their shining nights 

Than those that walk, and wot not what they are. 

— Love's Labour's Lost, I., i., 86-91. 

This is a characteristically poetic attitude; it is 
the antithesis of the scientific attitude. Formal 
logic excited Shakespeare's disdain even more con- 
spicuously. In the mouths of his professional fools 
he places many reductions to absurdity of what he 
calls the ''simple syllogism." He invests the term 
''chop-logic" with the significance of foolery in 
excelsis.^ Again, metaphysics, in any formal sense, 
were clearly not of Shakespeare's world. On one 
occasion he wrote of the topic round which most 
metaphysical speculation revolves: — 

We are such stuff 
As dreams are made on, and our little life 
Is rovmded by a sleep. 

— The Tempest, IV., i., 156-8. 

^ The speeches of the clown in Twelfth Night are particularly 
worthy of study for the satiric adroitness with which they expose 
the quibbling futility of syllogistic logic. Cf. Act I., Scene V., 
U. 43-57: 

Olivia. Go to, you're a dry fool; I'll no more of you: besides 
you grow dishonest. 

Clown. Two faults. Madonna, that drink and good counsel 
will amend : for give the dry fool drink, then is the fool not dry : 
bid the dishonest man mend himself; if he mend, he is no longer 
dishonest; if he cannot, let the botcher mend him. Anything 
that's mended is but patched: virtue that transgresses is but 
patched with sin; and sin that amends is but patched with virtue. 
If that this simple syllogism will serve, so; if it will not, what 
remedy ? 



SHAKESPEARE AND METAPHYSICS 147 

Such a theory of human life is first-rate poetry; it 
is an illuminating figure of poetic speech. But the 
simplicity with which the theme is presented, to 
the exclusion of many material issues, puts the 
statement out of the plane of metaphysical disquisi- 
tion, which involves subtle conflict of argument and 
measured resolution of doubt, rather than imagina- 
tive certainty or unconditional assertion. Nor is 
Hamlet's famous soliloquy on the merits and de- 
merits of suicide conceived in the spirit of the meta- 
physician. It is a dramatic description of a familiar 
phase of emotional depression; it explains nothing; 
it propounds no theory. It reflects a state of 
feehng; it breathes that torturing spirit of despon- 
dency which kills all hope of mitigating either 
the known ills of life or the imagined terrors of 
death. 

The faint, shadowy glimpses which Shakespeare 
had of scientific philosophy gave him small respect 
for it. Like the typical hard-headed Englishman, he 
doubted its practical efiicacy. Shakespeare viewed 
all formal philosophy much as Dr Johnson's Rasselas, 
whose faith in it dwindled, when he perceived that 
the professional philosopher, who preached superi- 
ority to all human frailties and weaknesses, suc- 
cumbed to them at the first provocation. 

There are more things in heaven and earth 
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.^ 

For there was never yet philosopher 

That could endure the toothache patiently.^ 



^ Hamlet, I., v., 166-7. 

^ Much Ado About Nothing, V., i., 35-6. 



148 ASPECTS OF SHAKESPEARE'S PHILOSOPHY 

Such phrases sum up Shakespeare's habitual bearing 
to formal philosophy. The consideration of causes, 
first principles, abstract truths never, in the drama- 
tist's opinion, cured a human ill. The futihty of for- 
mal philosophy stands, from this point of view, in no 
further need of demonstration. 



II 

But it is permissible to use the words philosopher 
and philosophy, without scientific precision or sig- 
nificance, in the popular inaccurate senses of shrewd 
observer and observation of Hfe. By philosophy 
we may understand common-sense wisdom. about 
one's fellow-men, their aspirations, their failures and 
successes. As soon as we employ the word in that 
significance, we must allow that few men were better 
philosophers than Shakespeare. 

Shakespeare is what Touchstone calls the shep- 
herd in As You Like It — "si natural philosopher" 
— an observer by light of nature, an acute exposi- 
tor of phases of human life and feeling. Character, 
thought, passion, emotion, form the raw material 
of which ethical or metaphysical systems are made. 
The poet's contempt for formal ethical or meta- 
physical theory co-existed with a searching know- 
ledge of the ultimate foundations of all systematised 
philosophic structures. The range of fact or know- 
ledge within which the formal theorist speculates in 
the fields of ethics, logic, metaphysics, or psychol- 
ogy, is, indeed, very circumscribed when it is com- 
pared with the region of observation and experience, 
over which Shakespeare exerted complete mastery. 

Almost every aspect of life Shakespeare portrays 



SHAKESPEARE'S INTUITIVE FACULTY 149 

with singular evenness of insight. He saw Hfe 
whole. The web of life always presented itself to 
him as a mingled yarn, good and ill together. He 
did not stay to reconcile its contradictions. He 
adduces a wealth of evidence touching ethical ex- 
perience. It may be that the patient scrutiny of 
formal philosophers can alone reveal the full signifi- 
cance of his harvest. But the dramatist's exposition 
of the workings of virtue or vice have no recondite 
intention. Shakespeare was no patient scholar, who 
deliberately sought to extend the Hmits of human 
knowledge. With unrivalled ease and celerity he 
digested, in the recesses of his consciousness, the 
fruit of personal observation and reading. His aim 
was to depict only conscious human conduct and 
human thought. He interpreted them unconscious- 
ly, by virtue of an involuntary intuition. 

Shakespeare's intuition pierces life at the lowest 
as well as at the highest level of experience. It is 
coloured by delicate imaginative genius as well as 
by robust and practical worldliness. Not his writ- 
ings only, but the facts of his private life — his mode 
of managing his private property, for example — 
attest his alert knowledge of the material and prac- 
tical affairs of human existence. Idealism and real- 
ism in perfect development were interwoven with 
the texture of his mind. 

Shakespeare was qualified by mental endowment 
for success in any career. He was by election a 
dramatist and, necessarily, one of unmatched ver- 
satility. His intuitive faculty enabled him, after re- 
garding life from any point of view that he willed, 
to depict through the mouths of his characters the 
chosen phase of Hfe in convincing, harmonious accord 



150 ASPECTS OF SHAKESPEARE'S PHILOSOPHY 

with his characters' individual circumstances and 
experiences. No obvious trace of his own personal 
circumstance or experience was suffered to emerge 
in the utterances of his characters, who lived for the 
moment in his brain. It is a commonplace to credit 
Shakespeare with supreme dramatic instinct. It is 
difficult fully to realise the significance of that at- 
tribute. It means that he could contract or expand 
at wiU and momentarily his own personaHty, so 
that it coincided exactly, now with a self-indulgent 
humorist like Falstaff, now with an introspective 
student like Hamlet, now with a cynical criminal 
like lago, now with a high-spirited girl like Rosa- 
lind, now with an ambitious woman hke Lady 
Macbeth, and then with a hundred more characters 
hardly less distinctive than these. It means that 
he could contrive the coincidence so absolutely as 
to leave no loophole for the introduction, into the 
several dramatic utterances, of any sentiment that 
should not be on the face of it adapted by right of 
nature to the speaker's idiosjoicrasies. That was 
Shakespeare's power. It is a power of which the 
effects are far easier to recognise than the causes or 
secret of operation. 

In the present connection it is happily only 
necessary to dwell on Shakespeare's dramatic instinct 
in order to guard against the peril of dogmatising 
from his works about his private opinions. So vari- 
ous and conflicting are Shakespeare's dramatic pro- 
nouncements on phases of experience that it is 
difficult and dangerous to aflSrm which pronounce- 
ments, if any, present most closely his personal 
sentiment. He fitted the lips of his dramatis per- 
soncB with speeches and sentiments so pecuharly 



SHAKESPEAKE'S PERSONAL OPINIONS 151 

adapted to them as to show no one quite undisputed 
sign of their creator's personaUty. 

Yet there are occasions when, without detracting 
from the omnipotence of Shakespeare's dramatic in- 
stinct, one may tentatively infer that Shakespeare 
gave voice through his created personages to senti- 
ments which were his own. The Shakespearean 
drama must incorporate somewhere within its vast 
limits the personal thoughts and passions of its 
creator, even although they are for the most part 
absorbed past recognition in the mighty mass, and 
no critical chemistry can with confidence disentangle 
them. At any rate, there are in the plays many 
utterances — ethical utterances, or observations con- 
ceived in the spirit of "a, natural philosopher" — 
which are repeated to much the same effect at differ- 
ent periods of the poet's career. These reiterated 
opinions frequently touch the conditions of well- 
being or calamity in civilised society; they often 
deal with man in civic or social relation with his 
neighbour; they define the capabilities of his will. 
It is unlikely that observations of this nature would 
be repeated if the sentiments they embody were out 
of harmony with the author's private conviction. 
Often we shall not strain a point or do our critical 
sense much violence if we assume that these recurring 
thoughts are Shakespeare's own. I purpose to call 
attention to a few of those which bear on large 
questions of government and citizenship and human 
volition. Involuntarily, they form the framework 
of a political and moral philosophy, which for clear- 
eyed sanity is without rival. 



152 ASPECTS OF SHAKESPEARE'S PHILOSOPHY 

III 

Shakespeare's political philosophy is instinct with 
the loftiest moral sense. Directly or indirectly, he 
defines many times the essential virtues and the 
inevitable temptations which attach to persons exer- 
cising legalised authority over their fellow-men. 
The topic always seems to stir in Shakespeare his 
most serious tone of thought and word. No one, 
in fact, has conceived a higher standard of public 
virtue and pubUc duty than Shakespeare. His 
intuition rendered him tolerant of human imperfec- 
tion. He is always in kindly sympathy with failure, 
with suffering, with the oppressed. Consequently 
he brings at the outset into clearer reUef than pro- 
fessed pohtical philosophers, the saving quahty of 
mercy in rulers of men. Twice Shakespeare pleads 
in almost identical terms, through the mouths of 
created characters, for generosity on the part of 
governors of states towards those who sin against 
law. In both cases he places his argument, with 
significant delicacy, on the lips of women. At a 
comparatively early period in his career as drama- 
tist, in The Merchant of Venice, Portia first gave 
voice to the political virtue of compassion. At a 
much later period Shakespeare set the same plea in 
the mouth of Isabella in Measure for Measure. The 
passages are too familiar to justify quotation. Very 
brief extracts will bring out clearly the identity of 
sentiment which finds definition in the two passages. 

These are Portia's views of mercy on the throne 
{Merchant of Venice, IV., i., 188 seq.) : — 

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes 
The throned monarch better than his crown; 



MERCY IN KINGS 153 

Mercy is above this sceptred sway; 
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings. 
It is an attribute to God himself; 
And earthly power doth then show likest God's, 
When mercy seasons justice. 

Consider this. 
That in the course of justice none of us 
Should see salvation.^ 

Here are Isabella's words in Measure for Measure 
(II., ii., 59 seq.) : — 

No ceremony that to great ones 'longs. 
Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword, 
The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe. 
Become them with one half so good a grace 
As mercy does. 

How wo\ild you be 
If He, which is the top of judgment, should 
But judge you as you are.^ 

O, it is excellent 
To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous 
To use it like a giant. 

Mercy is the predominating or crowning virtue 
that Shakespeare demands in rulers. But the 
Shakespearean code is innocent of any taint of 

^ In a paper on " Latin as an Intellectual Force," read before 
the International Congress of Arts and Sciences at St. Louis in 
September, 1904, Professor E. A. Sonnenschein sought to show 
that Portia's speech on mercy is based on Seneca's tract, De 
dementia. The most striking parallel passages are the follow- 
ing:— 

It becomes 
The throned monarch better than his crown. (M. of V., IV., i,, 
189-90.) 

Nullum dementia ex omnibus magis quam regem aut princi- 
pem decet. (Seneca, De dementia, I., iii., 3.) : — 

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest. 



154 ASPECTS OF SHAKESPEARE'S PHILOSOPHY 

sentimentality, and mercifulness is far from being 
the sovereign's sole qualification or primal test of 
fitness. More especially are kings and judges bound 
by their responsibilities and their duties to eschew 
self-glorification or self-indulgence. It is the virtues 
of the holders of office, not their office itself, which 
entitles them to consideration. Adventitious cir- 
cumstances give no man claim to respect. A man 
is alone worthy of regard by reason of his personal 
character. Honour comes from his own acts, neither 
from his ''foregoers" {i.e., ancestors) nor from his 

Eo scilicet formosius id esse magnificentiusque fatebimur quo 
in maiore praestabitur potestate (I., xix., 1) : — 

But mercy is above this sceptred sway, 
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings: 
It is an attribute of God Himself. 

—M. of v., IV., l, 193-5. 

Quod si di placabiles et aequi delicta potentium non statim 
fulminibus persequuntur, quanto aequius est hominem hominibus 
praepositum miti animo exercere imperium.'' (I., vii., 2): — 
And earthly power doth then show likest God's 
When mercy seasons justice. 

—M. of v., IV., i., 196-7. 

Quid autem? Non proximum eis (dis) locum tenet is qui se 
ex deorum natura gerit beneficus et largus et in melius potens? 
(I., xix., 9) :— 

Consider this. 
That, in the course of justice, none of us 
Should see salvation. 

—M. of v., IV., i., 198-200. 

Cogitate . . . quanta solitudo et vastitas futura sit si nihil 
relinquitur nisi quod iudex severus absolverit (I., vi., 1). 

This remarkable series of parallelisms does not affect the 
argument in the text that Shakespeare, who reiterated Portia's 
pleas in similar phraseology in Isabella's speeches, had a personal 
faith in the declared sentiment. Whether the parallelism is to be 
explained as conscious borrowing or accidental coincidence is an 
open question. 



TRUE TITLES TO HONOUR 155 

rank in society. ''Good alone is good without a 
name." This is not the view of the world, which 
values lying trophies, rank, or wealth. The world is 
thereby the sufferer.^ 

The world honours a judge; but if the judge be 
indebted to his office and not to his character for the 
respect that is paid him, he may deserve no more 
honour than the criminal in the dock, whom he 
sentences to punishment. ''A man may see how 
this world goes with no eyes," says King Lear to the 
bhnd Gloucester. ''Look with thine ears; see how 
yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark, in 
thine ear; change places, and, handy-dandy, which is 
the justice, which is the thief? Thou hast seen a 
farmer's dog bark at a beggar? And the creature 
run from the cur? There thou mightst behold the 
great image of authority; a dog's obeyed in office." 
"The great image of authority" is often a brazen 
idol. 

Hereditary rulers form no inconsiderable section 
of Shakespeare's dramatis personw. In Macbeth (IV., 

^ From lowest place, when virtuous things proceed. 
The place is dignified by the doer's deed: 
Where great additions swell 's, and virtue none. 
It is a dropsied honour: good alone 
Is good without a name; vileness is so: 
The property by what it is should go. 
Not by the title; . . . that is honour's scorn. 
Which challenges itself as honour's born. 
And is not like the sire: honours thrive 
When rather from our acts we them derive 
Than our foregoers: the mere word 's a slave, 
Debauch'd on every tomb; on every grave 
A lying trophy; and as oft is dumb 
Where dust and damn'd oblivion is the tomb 
Of honour'd bones indeed. 

—AlVs Well, II., iii., 130 seq. 



156 ASPECTS OF SHAKESPEARE'S PHILOSOPHY 

iii., 92-4) he specifically defined ''the king-becoming 
graces": — 

As justice, verity, temperance, stableness, 
Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness. 
Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude. 

But the dramatist's main energies are devoted to 
exposure of the hoUowness of this counsel of perfec- 
tion. Temptations to vice beset rulers of men to a 
degree that is unknown to their subjects. To avarice 
rulers are especially prone. Stanchless avarice con- 
stantly converts kings of ordinary clay into mon- 
sters. How often they forge 

Quarrels unjust against the good and loyal. 
Destroying them for wealth. 

— Macbeth, IV., iii., 83-4. 

Intemperance in all things — in work and pleasure 
— is a standing menace of monarchs. 

Boimdless intemperance 
In Nature is a tyranny : it hath been 
Th' untimely emptying of the happy throne 
And fall of many kings. 

—Macbeth, IV., iii., 66-9- 

A leader of men, if he be capable of salvation, must 
"delight no less in truth than life." Yet ''truth," 
for the most part, is banished from the conventional 
environment of royalty. 

Repeatedly does Shakespeare bring into dazzhng 
rehef the irony which governs the being of kings. 
Want of logic and defiance of ethical principle under- 
lie their pride in magnificent ceremonial and pagean- 
try. The ironic contrast between the pretensions of 
a king and the actual limits of human destiny is a 
text which Shakespeare repeatedly clothes in golden 
language. 

It is to be admitted that nearly all the kings in 



SHAKESPEARE ON ROYAL CEREMONY 157 

Shakespeare's gallery frankly acknowledge the make- 
believe and unreality which dogs regal pomp and 
ceremony. In self-communion they acknowledge the 
ruler's difficulty in finding truth in their traditional 
scope of life. In a great outburst on the night 
before Agincourt, Henry V. — the only king whom 
Shakespeare seems thoroughly to admire — openly 
describes the inevitable confusion between fact and 
fiction which infects the conditions of royalty. 
Anxiety and unhappiness are so entwined with cere- 
monial display as to deprive the king of the reliefs 
and recreations which freely He at the disposal of 
ordinary men. 

What infinite heart's-ease 
Must kings neglect that private men enjoy! 
And what have kings that privates have not too. 
Save ceremony, save general ceremony? 
And what art thou, thou idol ceremony.'' 
What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st more 
Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers? 
What are thy rents? what are thy comings-in? 

ceremony, show me but thy worth! 
What is thy soul of adoration? 

Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form. 

Creating awe and fear in other men? 

Wherein thou art less happy being fear'd 

Than they in fearing. 

What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet. 

But poison'd flattery? O, be sick, great greatness. 

And bid thy ceremony give thee cure ! 

Think'st thou the fiery fever will go out 

With titles blown from adulation? 

Will it give place to flexure and low bending? 

Canst thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee. 

Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream 

That play'st so subtly with a king's repose: 

1 am a king that find thee; and I know 
'Tis not the balm, the sceptre, and the ball. 
The sword, the mace, the crown imperial. 
The intertissued robe of gold and pearl, 



158 ASPECTS OF SHAKESPEARE'S PHILOSOPHY 

The farced title running 'fore the king, 

The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp 

That beats upon the high shore of this world, — 

No, not all these, thrice gorgeous ceremony. 

Not all these, laid in bed majestical. 

Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave 

Who, with a body fiU'd and vacant mind 

Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread. 

—Henry V., IV., i., 253-87. 

Barely distinguishable is the sentiment which 
finds expression in the pathetic speech of Henry V.'s 
father when he vainly seeks that sleep which thousands 
of his poorest subjects enjoy. The sleepless king 
points to the irony of reclining on the kingly couch 
beneath canopies of costly state when sleep refuses 
to weigh his eyelids down or steep his senses in for- 
getfulness. The king is credited with control of 
every comfort; but he is denied by nature comforts 
which she places freely at command of the humblest. 
So again does Richard II. soliloquize on the vain 
pride which imbues the king, while death all the 
time grins at his pomp and keeps his own court 
within the hollow crown that rounds the prince's 
mortal temples. Yet again, to identical effect is 
Henry VI. 's sorrowful question: 

Gives not the hawthorn-bush a sweeter shade^ 
To shepherds looking on their silly sheep. 
Than doth a rich-embroidered canopy 
To kings that fear their subjects' treachery.'' 

—3 Henry VL, II., v., 42-5. 

To this text Shakespeare constantly recurs, and 
he bestows on it all his fertile resources of illustration. 
The reiterated exposition by Shakespeare of the 
hollowness of kingly ceremony is a notable feature 
of his political sentiment. The dramatist's inde- 
pendent analysis of the quiddity of kingship is, in- 



TWO VIEWS OF KINGSHIP 159 

deed, alike in manner and matter, a startling con- 
tribution to sixteenth century speculation. In man- 
ner it is worthy of Shakespeare's genius at its 
highest. In matter it is for its day revolution- 
ary rationalism. It defies a popular doctrine, held 
almost universally by Shakespeare's contemporary 
fellow-countrymen, that royalty is divine and under 
God's special protection, that the gorgeous ceremony 
of the throne reflects a heavenly attribute, and that* 
the king is the pampered favourite of heaven. 

Bacon defined a king with slender qualifications, 
as "a mortal god on earth unto whom the living God 
has lent his own name." Shakespeare was well 
acquainted with this accepted doctrine. He oftpu 
gives dramatic definition of it. He dechnes to admit 
its soundness. Wherever he quotes it, he adds an 
ironical comment, which was calculated to perturb 
the orthodox royahst. Having argued that the 
day-labourer or the shepherd is far happier than a 
king, he logically refuses to admit that the monarch 
is protected by God from any of the ills of mortahty. 
Richard II. may assert that ^'the hand of God alone, 
and no hand of blood or bone" can rob him of the 
sacred handle of his sceptre. But the catastrophe 
of the play demonstrates that that theft is entirely 
within human scope. The king is barbarously mur- 
dered. In Hamlet the graceless usurping uncle 
declares that ''such divinity doth hedge a king," 
that treason cannot endanger his life. But the 
speaker is run through the body very soon after the 
brag escapes his lips. 

Shakespeare is no comfortable theorist, no re- 
specter of orthodox doctrine, no smooth-tongued 
approver of fashionable dogma. His acute intellect 



160 ASPECTS OF SHAKESPEARE'S PHILOSOPHY 

cuts away all the cobwebs, all the illusions, all the 
delusions, of formulae. His untutored insight goes 
down to the root of things; his king is not Philosopher 
Bacon's "mortal god on earth"; his king is '^but a 
man as I am," doomed to drag out a large part of 
liis existence in the galling chains of 'tradition, form 
and ceremonious duty," of unreality and self-de- 
ception. 

Shakespeare's intuitive power of seeing things as 
they are, affects his attitude to all social convention. 
Not merely royal rulers of men are in a false position, 
ethically and logically. "Beware of appearances," 
is Shakespeare's repeated warning to men and 
women of all ranks in the political or social hierarchy. 
"Put not your trust in ornament, be it of gold or 
of silver." In the spheres of law and rehgion, the 
dramatist warns against pretence, against shows of 
virtue, honesty, or courage which have no solid 
backing. 

The world is still deceiv'd with ornament. 
In law what plea so tainted and corrupt 
But, being season'd with a gracious voice. 
Obscures the show of evil? In religion 
What damned error, but some sober brow 
Will bless it and approve it with a text. 
Hiding the grossness with fair ornament.'' 
There is no vice so simple but assumes 
Some mark of virtue on his outward parts: 
How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false 
As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins 
The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars, 
Who, inward searched, have livers white as milk. 

— Merchant of Venice, III., ii., 74—86. 

Shakespeare was no cynic. He was not unduly 
distrustful of his fellow-men. He was not always 
suspecting them of something indistinguishable from 



THE DUTY OF OBEDIENCE 161 

fraud. When he wrote, ''The world is still deceived 
with ornament" which ''obscures the show of evil," 
he was expressing downright hatred — not suspicion 
— of sham, of quackery, of cant. His is the message 
of all commanding intellects which see through the 
hearts of men. Shakespeare's message is Carlyle's 
message or Ruskin's message anticipated by near- 
ly three centuries, and more potently and wisely 
phrased. 

IV 

At the same time as Shakespeare insists on the 
highest and truest standard of pubUc duty, he, with 
characteristically practical insight, acknowledges no 
less emphatically the necessity or duty of obedience 
to duly regulated governments. There may appear 
inconsistency in first conveying the impression that 
governments, or their officers, are usually unworthy 
of trust, and then in bidding mankind obey them 
impHcitly. But, although logical connection be- 
tween the two propositions be wanting, they are 
each convincing in their place. Both are the out- 
come of a robust common-sense. Order is essential 
to a nation's well-being. There must be discipline in 
civilised communities. Officers in authority must be 
obeyed. These are the axiomatic bases of every 
social contract, and no question of the personal fit- 
ness of officers of state impugns their stability. 

Twice does Shakespeare define in the same terms 
what he understands by the principle of all-com- 
pelling order, which is inherent in government. 
Twice does he elaborate the argument that precise 
orderly division of offices, each enjo)dng full and un- 
questioned authority, is essential to the maintenance 
of a state's equihbrium. 



162 ASPECTS OF SHAKESPEARE'S PHILOSOPHY 

The topic was first treated in the speeches of 
Henry V.'s councillors: — 

Exeter. For government, though high and low and lower. 
Put into parts, doth keep in one consent, 
Congreeing in a full and natural close. 
Like music. 

Cant. Therefore doth heaven divide 

The state of man in divers fvmctions. 
Setting endeavour in continual motion; 
To which is fixed, as an aim or butt. 
Obedience: for so work the honey-bees. 
Creatures that by a rule in nature teach 
The act of order to a peopled kingdom. 

— Henry V., I., ii., 180-9. 

There follows a very suggestive comparison 
between the commonwealth of bees and the economy 
of human society. The well-worn comparison has 
been fashioned anew by a writer of genius of our own 
day, M. Mseterlinck. 

In Troilus and Cressida (I., iii., 85 seq.) Shake- 
speare returns to the discussion, and defines with 
greater precision ^Hhe specialty of rule." There he 
approaches nearer than anj^where else in his writings 
the sphere of strict philosophic exposition. He argues 
that : — 

The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre. 
Observe degree, priority, and place, 
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form. 
Office, and custom in all line of order. 

Human society is bound to follow this celestial 
example. At all hazards, one must protect 'Hhe 
unity and married calm of states." Degree, order, 
discipline, are the only sure safeguards against brute 
force and chaos which civihsed institutions exist to 
hold in check: — 

How could communities. 
Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities. 



THE "DUE OF BIRTH" 163 

Peaceful commerce from dividable shores, 

The primogeniture and due of birth, 

Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels. 

But by degree stand in authentic place? 

Take but degree away, imtune that string. 

And, hark, what discord follows ! each thing meets 

In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters 

Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores. 

And make a sop of all this solid globe: 

Strength should be lord of imbecility, 

And the rude son should strike his father dead: 

Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong. 

Between whose endless jar justice resides, 

Should lose their names, and so should justice too. 

Then every thing includes itself in power, 

Power into will, will into appetite; 

And appetite, an universal wolf. 

So doubly seconded with will and power. 

Must make perforce an universal prey, 

And last eat up himself. 

Deprived of degree, rank, order, society dissolves 
itself in ''chaos." 

Near the end of his career, Shakespeare impres- 
sively re-stated his faith in the imperative need of 
the due recognition of social rank and grade in 
civilised communities. In Cymbeline (IV., ii., 246-9) 
"a queen's son" meets his death in fight with an in- 
ferior, and the conqueror is inclined to spurn the 
hfeless corpse. But a wise veteran solemnly uplifts 
his voice to forbid the insult. Appeal is made to the 
sacred principle of social order, which must be re- 
spected even in death: — 

Though mean and mighty, rotting 
Together, make one dust; yet reverence, — 
That angel of the world, — doth make distinction 
Of place 'twixt high and low. 

"Reverence, that angel of the world," is the 
ultimate bond of civil society, and can never be 



1G4 ASPECTS OF SHAKESPEARE'S PHILOSOPHY 

defied with impunity. It is the saving sanction of 
social order, 

V 

I have quoted some of Shakespeare's avowedly 
ethical utterances which bear on conditions of civil 
society — on morals in their social aspect. There is 
no obscurity about their drift. Apart from ethical 
declaration, it may be that ethical lessons touching 
political virtue as well as other specific aspects of 
morality are deducible from a study of Shakespeare's 
plots and characters. Very generous food for reflec- 
tion seems to be offered the political philosopher by 
the plots and characters of Julius Ccesar and Corio- 
lanus. The personality of Hamlet is instinct with 
ethical suggestion. The story and personages of 
Measure for Measure present the most persistent of 
moral problems. But discussion of the ethical im- 
port of Shakespeare's several dramatic portraits or 
stories is of doubtful utility. There is a genuine 
danger of reading into Shakespeare's plots and 
characters more direct ethical significance than is 
really there. Dramatic art never consciously nor 
systematically serves obvious purposes of morality, 
save to its own detriment. 

Nevertheless there is not likely to be much dis- 
agreement with the general assertion that Shake- 
speare's plots and characters involuntarily develop 
under his hand in conformity with the straight- 
forward requirements of moral law. He upholds the 
broad canons of moral truth with consistency, even 
with severity. There is no mistaking in his works 
on which side lies the right. He never renders vice 
amiable. His want of delicacy, his challenges of 
modesty, need no palliation. It was characteristic 



SHAKESPEARE'S MORAL SENSE 165 

of his age to speak more plainly of many topics about 
which polite lips are nowadays silent. But Shake- 
speare's coarsenesses do no injury to the healthy- 
minded. They do not encourage evil propensities. 
Wickedness is always wickedness in Shakespeare, 
and never deludes the spectator by masquerading as 
something else. His plays never present problems as 
to whether vice is not after all in certain conditions 
the sister of virtue. Shakespeare never shows vice 
in the twilight, nor leaves the spectator or reader in 
doubt as to what its features precisely are. Vice 
injures him who practises it in the Shakespearean 
world, and ultimately proves his ruin. One cannot 
play with vice with impunity. 

The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices 
Make instruments to plague us. 

It is not because Shakespeare is a conscious 
moralist, that the wheel comes full circle in his 
dramatic world. It is because his sense of art is 
involuntarily coloured by a profound conviction of 
the ultimate justice which governs the operations of 
human nature and society. 

Shakespeare argues, in effect, that a man reaps as 
he sows. It may be contended that Nature does not 
always work in strict accord with this Shakespearean 
canon, and that Shakespeare thereby shows himself 
more of a deliberate moralist than Nature herself. 
But the dramatist idealises or generalises human ex- 
perience; he does not reproduce it literally. There 
is nothing in the 'Shakespearean canon that runs 
directly counter to the idealised or generalised ex- 
perience of the outer world. The wicked and the 
foolish, the intemperate and the over-passionate, 
reach in Shakespeare's world that disastrous goal, 



166 ASPECTS OF SHAKESPEARE'S PHILOSOPHY 

which nature at large keeps in reserve for them and 
only by rare accident suffers them to evade. The 
father who brings up his children badly and yet ex- 
pects every dutiful consideration from them is only 
in rare conditions spared the rude awakening which 
overwhelms King Lear. The jealous husband who 
wrongly suspects his wife of infidelity commonly 
suffers the fate either of Othello or of Leontes. 

VI 

Shakespeare regards it as the noblest ambition in 
man to master his own destiny. There are numerous 
passages in which the dramatist figures as an absolute 
and uncompromising champion of the freedom of the 
will. '^'Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus/' 
says one of his characters, lago; **Our bodies are our 
gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners." 
Edmond says much the same in King Lear when he 
condemns as 'Hhe excellent foppery of the world" 
the ascription to external influences of all our faults 
and misfortunes, whereas they proceed from our 
wilful, deliberate choice of the worser way. Re- 
peatedly does Shakespeare assert that we are useful 
or useless members of society according as we will it 
ourselves. 

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie 
Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky 
Gives us free scope, 

says Helena in AlVs Well (I., i., 231-3). 

Men at some time are masters of their fates, 

says Cassius in Julius Ccesar (I., ii., 139-41); 

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars. 
But in ourselves that we are underlings. 



THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 167 

Hereditary predispositions, the accidents of environ- 
ment, are not insuperable ; they can be neutrahsed by 
force of will, by character. Character is omnipotent. 

The self-sufficing, imperturbable will is the ideal 
possession, beside which all else in the world is value- 
less. But the quest of it is difficult, and success in 
the pursuit is rare. Mastery of the will is the result 
of a rare conjunction — a perfect commingling of blood 
and judgment. Without such harmonious union 
man is ''a pipe'' — a musical instrument — ''for For- 
tune's finger to sound what stop she pleases." Man 
can only work out his own salvation when he can 
control his passions and can take with equal thanks 
Fortune's buffets or rewards. 

The best of men is — 

Spare in diet 
Free from gross passion or of mirth or anger, 
Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood. 

—Henry V., II., ii., 131-3. 

His is the nature 

Whom passion could not shake — whose solid virtue 
The shot of accident nor dart of chance 
Could neither graze nor pierce. 

—Othello, IV., i., 176-9. 

Stability of temperament is the finest fruit of the 
free exercise of the will; it is the noblest of mascu- 
line excellences. 

Give me that man 
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him 
In my heart's core — ay, in my heart of hearts. 

— Hamlet, III., ii., 76-8. 

In spite of his many beautiful portrayals of the 
charms and tenderness and innocence of womanhood, 
Shakespeare had less hope in the ultimate capacity 
of women to control their destiny than in the ultimate 
capacity of men. The greatest of his female crea- 



168 ASPECTS OF SHAKESPEARE'S PHILOSOPHY 

tions, Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra, stand in a cat- 
egory of their own. They do not lack high power 
of will, even if they are unable so to commingle 
blood and judgment as to master fate. 

Elsewhere, the dramatist seems to betray private 
suspicion of the normal woman's volitional capacity 
by applying to her heart and mind the specific 
epithet 'Vaxen." The feminine mind takes the 
impress of its environment as easily as wax takes 
the impress of a seal. In two passages where this 
simile is employed, ^ the deduction from it is pressed 
to the furthest Hmit, and free-will is denied women 
altogether. Feminine susceptibility is pronounced 
to be incurable; wavering, impressionable emotion 
is a main constituent of woman's being; women are 
not responsible for the sins they commit nor the 
wrongs they endure. 

This is reactionary doctrine, and one of the few 
points in Shakespeare's '^ natural" philosophy which 
invites dissent. But he makes generous amends by 
ascribing to women a plentiful supply of humour. 
No writer has proclaimed more effectively his faith 
in woman's brilHance of wit nor in her quickness of 
apprehension. 

■^ For men have marble^ women waxen minds. 
And therefore are they formed as marble will; 
The weak oppress'd, the impression of strange kinds 
Is form'd in them by force, by fraud, or skill. 
Then call them not the authors of their ill, 
No more than wax shall be accounted evil. 
Wherein is stamp'd the semblance of a devil. 

— Lucrece, 1240—6. 

How easy it is for the proper-false 
In women's waxen hearts to set their forms ! 
Alas ! our frailty is the cause, not we ; 
For, such as we are made of, sucli we be. 

—Twelfth Night, II., ii., 31. 



SHAKESPEARE'S OPTIMISM 169 



VII 

Despite the solemnity which attaches to Shake- 
speare's philosophic reflections, he is at heart an 
optimist and a humorist. He combines with his 
serious thought a thorough joy in life, an irremov- 
able preference for the bright over the dismal side 
of things. The creator of Falstaff and Mercutio, of 
Beatrice and the Princess in Love's Labour's Lost, 
could hardly fail to set store by that gaiety of spirit 
which is the antidote to unreasoning discontent, and 
keeps society in good savour. 

Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous. 
There shall be no more cakes and ale? 

is the voice of Shakespeare as well as of Sir Toby 
Belch. The dramatist was at one with Rosalind, 
his offspring, when she told Jaques: — 

I had rather have a fool to make me merry. 
Than experience to make me sad. 

The same sanguine optimistic temper constantly 
strikes a more impressive note. 

There is some soul of goodness in things evil. 
Would men observingly distil it out, 

is a comprehensive maxim, which sounds as if it 
came straight from Shakespeare's lips. This battle- 
cry of invincible optimism is uttered in the play by 
Shakespeare's favourite hero, Henry V. It is hard 
to quarrel with the inference that these words con- 
vey the ultimate verdict of the dramatist on human 
affairs. 



VIII 



SHAKESPEARE AND PATRIOTISM » 

His noble negligences teach 
What others' toils despair to reach. 



Patriotism is a natural instinct closely allied to the 
domestic affections. Its normal activity is as es- 
sential as theirs to the health of society. But, in 
a greater degree than other instincts, the patriotic 
impulse works with perilous irregularity unless it 
be controlled by the moral sense and the intellect. 
Every student of history and pohtics is aware 
how readily the patriotic instinct, if uncontrolled 
by morality and reason, comes into conflict with 
both. Freed of moral restraint it is prone to en- 
gender a peculiarly noxious brand of spurious sen- 
timent — the patriotism of false pretence. Bom- 
bastic masquerade of the genuine impulse is not 
uncommon among place-hunters in ParHament and 
popularity-hunters in constituencies, and the hon- 
est instinct is thereby brought into disrepute. Dr 
Johnson was thinking solely of the frauds and moral 
degradation which have been sheltered by self^ 
seekers imder the name of patriotism when he none 

^ This paper was first printed in the Cornhill Magazine, May, 
1901. 

170 



THE PATRIOTIC INSTINCT 171 

too pleasantly remarked: ''Patriotism is the last 
refuge of a scoundrel." 

The Doctor's epigram hardly deserves its fame. 
It embodies a very meagre fraction of the truth. 
While it ignores the beneficent effects of the patriotic 
instinct, it does not exhaust its evil propensities. It 
is not only the moral obliquity of place-hunters or 
popularity-hunters that can fix on patriotism the 
stigma of offence. Its healthy development depends 
on intellectual as well as on moral guidance. When 
the patriotic instinct, however honestly it be cher- 
ished, is freed of intellectual restraint, it works even 
more mischief than when it is deliberately coun- 
terfeited. Among the empty-headed it very easily 
degenerates into an over-assertive, a swollen selfish- 
ness, which ignores or defies the just rights and 
feelings of those who do not chance to be their 
fellow-countrymen. No one needs to be reminded 
how much wrongdoing and cruelty have been en- 
couraged by perfectly honest patriots who lack 
"intellectual armour." Dr Johnson knew that the 
blockhead seeks the shelter of patriotism with 
almost worse result to the body politic than the 
scoundrel. 

On the other hand, morality and reason alike 
resent the defect of patriotism as stoutly as its 
immoral or unintellectual extravagances. A total 
lack of the instinct implies an abnormal develop- 
ment of moral sentiment or intellect which must be 
left to the tender mercies of the mental pathologist. 
The man who is the friend of every country but his 
own can only be accounted for scientifically as the 
victim of an aberration of mind or heart. Ostenta- 
tious disclaimers of the patriotic sentiment deserve 



172 SHAKESPEARE AND PATRIOTISM 

as little sympathy as the false pretenders to an exag- 
gerated share of it. A great statesman is responsible 
for an apophthegm on that aspect of the topic which 
always deserves to be quoted in the same breath as 
Dr Johnson's familiar half-truth. When Sir Francis 
Burdett, the Radical leader in the early days of 
the last century, avowed scorn for the normal instinct 
of patriotism, Lord John Russell, the leader of the 
Liberal party in the House of Commons, sagely 
retorted: ''The honourable member talks of the 
cant of patriotism; but there is something worse 
than the cant of patriotism, and that is the recant of 
patriotism." ^ Mr Gladstone declared Lord John's 
repartee to be the best that he ever heard. 

It may be profitable to consider how patriotism, 
which is singularly liable to distortion and per- 
version, presented itself to the mind of Shakespeare, 
the clearest-headed student of human thought and 
sentiment. 

II 

In Shakespeare's universal survey of human 
nature it was impossible that he should leave 
patriotism and the patriotic instinct out of account. 
It was inevitable that prevalent phases of both 
should frequently occupy his attention. In his role 
of dramatist he naturally dealt with the topic in- 
cidentally or disconnectedly rather than in the way 

^ The pun on " cant " and " recant " was not original, though 
Lord John's application of it was. Its inventor seems to have 
been Lady Townshend, the brilliant mother of Charles Towns- 
hend, the elder Pitt's Chancellor of the Exchequer. When she 
was asked if George Whitefield, the evangelical preacher, had 
yet recanted, she replied: " No, he has only been canting." 



BOLINGBROKE'S PATRIOTISM 173 

of definite exposition ; but in the result, his treatment 
will probably be found to be more exhaustive than 
that of any other English writer. The Shakespear- 
ean drama is peculiarly fertile in illustration of the 
virtuous or beneficent working of the patriotic in- 
stinct; but it does not neglect the malevolent or 
morbid symptoms incident either to its exorbitant or 
to its defective growth; nor is it wanting in sugges- 
tions as to how its healthy development may be best 
ensured. Part of Shakespeare's message on the sub- 
ject is so well known that readers may need an apol- 
ogy for reference to it; but Shakespeare's declara- 
tions have not, as far as I know, been co-ordinated.^ 

Broadly speaking, the Shakespearean drama en- 
forces the principle that an active instinct of patriot- 
ism promotes righteous conduct. This principle hes 
at the root of Shakespeare's treatment of history 
and political action, both English and Roman. 
Normal manifestations of the instinct in Shake- 
speare's world shed a gracious light on life. But it is 
seen to work in many ways. The patriotic instinct 
gives birth to various moods. It operates with some 
appearance of inconsistency. Now it acts as a 
spiritual sedative, now as a spiritual stimulant. 

Of all Shakespeare's characters, it is Bolingbroke 
in Richard II. who betrays most effectively the 
tranquiUsing influence of patriotism. In him the 
patriotic instinct incHnes to identity with the simple 
spirit of domesticity. It is a magnified love for 

^ In passing cursorily over the whole field I must ask pardon 
for dwelling occasionally on ground that is in detached detail 
sufficiently well trodden, as well as for neglecting some points 
which require more thorough exploration than is practicable within 
my present limits. 



174 SHAKESPEARE AND PATRIOTISM 

his own hearthstone — a glorified home-sickness. 
The very soil of England, England's ground, excites 
in Bolingbroke an overmastering sentiment of de- 
votion. His main happiness in life resides in the 
thought that England is his mother and his nurse. 
The patriotic instinct thus exerts on a character 
which is naturally cold and uns)Tnpathetic a soften- 
ing, soothing, and purifjdng sway. Despite his for- 
bidding self-absorption and personal ambition he 
touches hearts, and rarely fails to draw tears when 
he sighs forth the bald lines: — 

Where'er I wander, boast of this I can. 
Though banished, yet a true-born Englishman. 

In such a shape the patriotic instinct may tend in 
natures weaker than Bolingbroke's to mawkishness 
or sentimentality. But it is incapable of active 
offence. It makes for the peace and goodwill not 
merely of nations among themselves, but of the con- 
stituent elements of each nation within itself. It 
unifies himian aspiration and breeds social harmony. 
Very different is the phase of the patriotic instinct 
which is portrayed in the more joyous, more frank, 
and more impulsive characters of Faulconbridge 
the Bastard in the play of King John, and of the 
King in Henry V. It is in them an inexhaustible 
stimulus to action. It is never quiescent, but its 
operations are regulated by morality and reason, 
and it finally induces a serene exaltation of temper. 
It was a pardonable foible of Elizabethan writers 
distinctly to identify with the English character 
this healthy energetic sort of patriotism — the sort of 
patriotism to which an atmosphere of knavery or 
folly proves fatal. 



FAULCONBRIDGE AND HENRY V. 175 

Faulconbridge is an admirable embodiment of the 
patriotic sentiment in its most attractive guise. He 
is a manly soldier, blunt in speech, contemning sub- 
terfuge, chafing against the dictates of poUtical ex- 
pediency, and believing that quarrels between nations 
which cannot be accommodated without loss of self- 
respect on the one side or the other, had better be 
fought out in resolute and honourable war. He is 
the sworn foe of the bully or the braggart. Cruelty 
is hateful to him. The patriotic instinct nurtures in 
him a warm and generous humanity. His faith in 
the future of his nation depends on the confident 
hope that she will be true to herself, to her traditions, 
to her responsibilities, to the great virtues; that she 
will be at once courageous and magnanimous: — 

Come the three corners of the world in arms. 

And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue. 

If England to itself do rest but true. 

Faulconbridge's patriotism is a vivacious spur to 
good endeavour in every relation of fife. 

Henry V. is drawn by Shakespeare at fuller 
length than Faulconbridge. His character is cast 
in a larger mould. But his patriotism is of the same 
spirited, wholesome type. Though Henry is a born 
soldier, he discourages insolent aggression or reck- 
less displays of prowess in fight. With greater em- 
phasis than his archbishops and bishops he insists 
that his country's sword should not be unsheathed 
except at the bidding of right and conscience. At 
the same time, he is terrible in resolution when the 
time comes for striking blows. War, when it is 
once invoked, must be pursued with all possible 
force and fury: — 



176 SHAKESPEARE AND PATRIOTISM 

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man 
As modest stillness and humility. 
But when the blast of war blows in his ears. 
Then imitate the action of the tiger.^ 

But although Henry's patriotic instinct can drive 
him into battle, it keeps him faithful there to the 
paths of humanity. Always alive to the horrors of 
war, he sternly forbids looting or even the use of 
insulting language to the enemy. It is only when a 
defeated enemy declines to acknowledge the obvious 
ruin of his fortunes that a sane and practical patriot- 
ism defends resort on the part of the conqueror to 
the grimmest measure of severity. The healthy 
instinct stiffens the grip on the justly won fruits of 
victory. As soon as Henry V. sees that the French 
wilfully deny the plain fact of their overthrow, he is 
moved, quite consistently, to exclaim: — 

What is it then to me if impious war. 
Arrayed in flames like to the prince of fiends. 
Do with his smirched complexion all fell feats, 
Enlinked to waste and desolation? 

The context makes it clear that there is no confusion 
here between the patriotic instinct and mere belli- 
cose ecstasy. 

The confusion of patriotism with militant aggres- 
siveness is as familiar to the Shakespearean drama 
as to the external world; but it is always exhibited 
by Shakespeare in its proper colours. The Shake- 
spearean ''mob," unwashed in mind and body, 

^ On this point the Shakespearean oracle always speaks with 
a decisive and practical note: — 

Beware 
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in 
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee. 

— Hamlet, I., iii., 65-7. 



BELLICOSE ECSTASY 177 

habitually yields to it, and justifies itself by a spe- 
ciousness of argument against which a clean vision 
rebels. The so-called patriotism which seeks ex- 
pression in war for its own sake is alone intelligible 
to Shakespeare's pavement orators. ''Let me have 
war, say I," exclaims the professedly patriotic 
spokesman of the ill-conditioned proletariat in Corio- 
lanus; ''it exceeds peace as far as day does night; it's 
spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a 
very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insen- 
sible. . . . Ay, and it makes men hate one another.'^ 
For this distressing result of peace, the reason is given 
that in times of peace men have less need of one 
another than in seasons of war, and the crude argu- 
ment closes with the cry: "The wars for my money." 
There is irony in this suggestion of the mercantile 
value of war on the lips of a spokesman of paupers. 
It is solely the impulsive mindless patriot who strains 
after mere miUtary glory. 

Glory is like a circle in the water. 

Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself. 

Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought. 

—1 Henry VI., I., ii., 133-5. 

No wise man vaunts in the name of patriotism 
his own nation's superiority over another. The 
typical patriot, Henry V., once makes the common 
boast that one Englishman is equal to three French- 
men, but he apologises for the brag as soon as it is 
out of his mouth. (He fears the air of France has 
demorahsed him.) 

Elsewhere Shakespeare utters a vivacious warn- 
ing against the patriot's exclusive claim for his 
country of natural advantages, which all the world 
shares substantially alike. 



178 SHAKESPEARE AND PATRIOTISM 

Hath Britain all the sun that shines ? Day, night. 
Are they not but in Britain? I* the world's volume 
Our Britain seems as of it, but not in 't; 
In a great pool, a swan's nest: pr'ythee, think 
There's livers out of Britain.^ 

It is not the wild hunger for war, but the stable 
interests of peace that are finally subserved in the 
Shakespearean world by true and well-regulated pa- 
triotism. Henry V., the play of Shakespeare which 
shows the genuine patriotic instinct in its most ener- 
getic guise, ends with a powerful appeal to France 
and England, traditional foes, to cherish ''neighbour- 
hood and Christianhke accord," so that never again 
should ''war advance his bleeding sword 'twixt 
England and fair France." 

However whole-heartedly Shakespeare rebukes 
the excesses and illogical pretensions to which the 
lack of moral or intellectual discipUne exposes pa- 
triotism, he reserves his austerest censure for the 
disavowal of the patriotic instinct altogether. One 
of the greatest of his plays is practically a diagnosis 
of the perils which follow in the train of a wilful 
abnegation of the normal instinct. In Coriolanus 
Shakespeare depicts the career of a man who thinks 
that he can, by virtue of inordinate self-confidence 
and beUef in his personal superiority over the rest 
of his countr3rmen, safely abjure and defy the com- 
mon patriotic instinct, which, after all, keeps the 
State in being. "I'll never," says Coriolanus, 

Be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand 
As if a man were author of himself. 
And knew no other kin.^ 

Coriolanus deliberately suppresses the patriotic in- 
stinct, and, with greater consistency than others who 

^ Cymheline, III., iv., 139-43. * Coriolanus, V., iii., 34-7. 



PATRIOTIC CRITICISM 179 

have at times followed his example, joins the fight- 
ing ranks of his country's enemies by way of illus- 
trating his sincerity. His action proves to be in 
conflict with the elementary condition of social 
equihbriimi. The subversion of the natural instinct 
is brought to the logical issues of sin and death. 
Domestic ties are rudely severed. The crime of 
treason is risked with an insolence that is fatal 
to the transgressor. With relentless logic does the 
Shakespearean drama condemn defiance of the nat- 
ural instinct of patriotism. 

Ill 

It does not, however, follow that the patriotic 
instinct of the Shakespearean gospel encourages 
bhnd adoration of state or country. IntelHgent citi- 
zens of the Shakespearean world are never prohibited 
from honestly criticising the acts or aspirations of 
their fellows, and from seeking to change them when 
they honestly think they can be changed for the 
better. It is not the business of a discerning patriot 
to sing paeans in his nation's honour. His final aim 
is to help his country to realise the highest ideals of 
social and pohtical conduct which are known to him, 
and to ensure for her the best possible '^ reputation 
through the world." Criticism conceived in a pa- 
triotic spirit should be constant and unflagging. 
The true patriot speaks out as boldly when he thinks 
the nation errs as when, in his opinion, she adds new 
laurels to her crown. The Shakespearean patriot 
applies a rigorous judgment to all conditions of his 
environment — both social and pohtical. 

Throughout the Enghsh history plays, Shake- 
speare bears convincing testimony to the right, and 



180 SHAKESPEARE AND PATRIOTISM 

even to the duty, of the patriot to exercise in all 
seriousness his best powers of criticism on the political 
conduct of his fellow-citizens and of those who rule 
over him. 

Shakespeare's studies of English history are ani- 
mated by a patriotism which boldly seeks and faces 
the truth. His dramatic presentments of English 
history have been often described as fragments of a 
national epic, as detached books of an English Iliad. 
But they embody no epic or heroic glorification of 
the nation. Taking the great series which begins 
chronologically with King John and ends with 
Richard III. (Henry VIII. stands apart), we find 
that Shakespeare makes the central features of the 
national history the persons of the kings. Only in 
the case of Henry V. does he clothe an English king 
with any genuine heroism. Shakespeare's kings are 
as a rule but men as we are. The violet smells to 
them as it does to us; all their senses have but 
human conditions; and though their affections be 
higher mounted than ours, yet when they stoop they 
stoop with Hke wing. Excepting Henry V., the his- 
tory plays are tragedies. They 'Hell sad stories of 
the death of kings." But they do not merely illus- 
trate the crushing burdens of kingship or point the 
moral of the hollo wness of kingly pageantry; they 
explain why kingly glory is in its essence brittle 
rather than brilliant. And since Shakespeare's rulers 
reflect rather than inspire the character of the nation, 
we are brought to a study of the causes of the 
brittleness of national glory. 

The glory of a nation, as of a king, is only stable, 
we learn, when the nation, as the king, lives soberly, 
virtuously and wisely, and is courageous, magnan- 



JOHN OF GAUNT'S DYING SPEECH 181 

imous, and zealous after knowledge. Cowardice, 
meanness, ignorance, and cruelty ruin nations as sure- 
ly as they ruin kings. This is the lesson specifically 
taught in the most eloquent of all the direct avow- 
als of patriotism which are to be found in Shake- 
speare's plays — in the dying speech of John of Gaunt. 
That speech is no ebullition of the undisciplined 
patriotic instinct. It is a solemn announcement of 
the truth that the greatness and glory, with which 
nature and histor}^ have endowed a nation, may be 
dissipated when, on the one hand, the rulers prove 
selfish, frivolous and unequal to the responsibilities 
which a great past places on their shoulders, and 
when, on the other hand, the nation acquiesces in 
the depravity of its governors. In his opening lines, 
the speaker lays emphasis on the possibiHties of 
greatness with which the natural physical conditions 
of the country and its political and mihtary tradi- 
tions have invested his countrymen. Thereby he 
brings into lurid relief the sin and the shame of 
paltering with, of putting to ignoble uses, the national 
character and influence. The dying patriot apos- 
trophises England in the familiar phrases, as : — 

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle. . . . 

This fortress, built by nature for herself. 

Against infection and the hand of war; 

This happy breed of men, this little world; 

This precious stone set in the silver sea. 

Which serves it in the office of a wall. 

Or as a moat defensive to a house. 

Against the envy of less happier lands : 

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, 

This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land. 

Dear for her reputation through the world. 

— Richard II., II., i., 40-58. 

The last line identifies with the patriotic instinct the 



182 SHAKESPEARE AND PATRIOTISM 

aspiration of a people to deserve well of foreign 
opinion. Subsequently the speaker turns from his 
survey of the ideal which he would have his country 
seek. He exposes with ruthless frankness the ugly 
realities of her present degradation. 

England, boiind in with the triumphant sea. 
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege 
Of wat'ry Neptune, is now bound in with shame. 
With inky blots, and rotten parchment bonds, — 
That England, that was wont to conquer others. 
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself. 

— Richard II., II., i., 61—6. 

At the moment the speaker's warning is scorned, but 
ultimately it takes effect. At the end of the play of 
Richard II., England casts off the ruler and his allies, 
who by their self-indulgence and moral weakness 
play false with the traditions of the country. 

In Henry V., the only one of Shakespeare's his- 
torical plays in which an English king quits the stage 
in the full enjoyment of prosperity, his good fortune 
is more than once explained as the reward of his 
endeavour to abide by the highest ideals of his race, 
and of his resolve to exhibit in his own conduct its 
noblest mettle. His strongest appeals to his fellow- 
countrymen are: — 

Dishonour not your mothers; now attest 

That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you ; 

Let us swear 
That you are worth your breeding. 

The kernel of sound patriotism is respect for a 
nation's traditional repute, for the attested worth of 
the race. That is the large lesson which Shake- 
speare taught continuously throughout his career as 
a dramatist. The teaching is not solely enshrined 
in the poetic eloquence either of plays of his early 



THE WARNING IN CYMBELINE 183 

years like Richard 11. , or of plays of his middle life 
like Henry V. It is the last as well as the first word 
in Shakespeare's collective declaration on the true 
character of patriotism. Cymheline belongs to the 
close of his working life, and there we meet once 
more the assurance that a due regard to the past 
and an active resolve to keep alive ancestral virtue 
are the surest signs of health in the patriotic instinct. 
The accents of John of Gaunt were repeated by^ 
Shakespeare with Httle modulation at that time of 
his life when his reflective power was at its ripest. 
The Queen of Britain, Cymbeline's wife, is the per- 
sonage in whose mouth Shakespeare sets, not per- 
haps quite appropriately, the latest message in regard 
to patriotism that he is known to have delivered. 
Emissaries from the Emperor Augustus have come 
from Rome to demand from the King of Britain pay- 
ment of the tribute that Julius Csesar had long since 
imposed on the island, by virtue of a force majeure, 
which is temporarily extinguished. The pusillani- 
mous King Cymbeline is indisposed to put himself to 
the pains of contesting the claim, but the resolute 
queen awakens in him a sense of patriotism and of 
patriotic obligation by recalling the more nobly in- 
spired attitude of his ancestors, and by convincing 
him of the baseness of ignoring the physical features 
which had been bestowed by nature on his domains 
as a guarantee of their independence. 

Remember, sir my liege, 
The kings your ancestors, together with 
The natural bravery of your isle, which stands 
As Neptune's park, ribbed and paled in 
With rocks unscalable and roaring waters. 
With sands, that will not bear your enemies' boats. 
But suck them up to the topmast. 

— Cymbeline, III., i., 16-22. 



184 SHAKESPEARE AND PATRIOTISM 

The appeal prevails, and the tribute is refused. 
Although the evolution of the plot which is based on 
an historical chronicle compels the renewed acqui- 
escence of the British king in the Roman tax at the 
close of the play, the Queen of Britain's spirited 
insistence on the maritime strength of her country 
loses little of its significance. 

IV 

Frank criticism of the social life of the nation 
is as characteristic of Shakespearean drama as out- 
spoken exposition of its poHtical failings. There is 
hardly any of Shakespeare's plays which does not 
offer shrewd comment on the foibles and errors of 
contemporary English society. 

To society Shakespeare's attitude is that of a 
humourist, who invites to reformation half-jestingly. 
His bantering tone, when he turns to social censure, 
strikingly contrasts with the tragic earnestness that 
colours his criticism of political vice or weakness. 
Some of the national failings on the social side which 
Shakespeare rebukes may seem trivial at a first 
glance. But it is the voice of prudent patriotism 
which prompts each count in the indictment. The 
keenness of Shakespeare's insight is attested by the 
circumstance that every charge has a modern ap- 
plication. None is yet quite out of date. 

Shakespeare rarely missed an opportunity of 
betraying contempt for the extravagances of his 
countrymen and countrywomen in regard to dress. 
Portia says of her English suitor Faulconbridge, the 
young baron of England: "How oddly he is suited! 
I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose 



SOCIAL FOIBLES 185 

in France, his bonnet in Germany, and his behaviour 
everyivhere." Another faihng in Englishmen, which 
Portia detects in her Enghsh suitor, is a total igno- 
rance of any language but his own. She, an Italian 
lady, remarks: '^You know I say nothing to him, 
for he imderstands not me nor I him. He hath 
neither Latin, French, nor Italian. He is a proper 
man's picture, but, alas! who can converse with a 
dumb show." This moving plaint draws attention 
to a defect which is not yet supplied. There are few 
Englishmen nowadays who, on being challenged to 
court Portia in Italian, would not cut a sorry figure 
in dumb show — sorrier figures than Frenchmen or 
Germans. No true patriot ought to ignore the fact 
or to direct attention to it with complacency. 

Again, Shakespeare was never unmindful of the 
intemperate habits of his compatriots. When lago 
sings a verse of the song beginning, ''And let me the 
cannikin clink," and ending, ''Why then let a soldier 
drink," Cassio commends the excellence of the ditty. 
Thereupon lago explains: "I learned it in England, 
where indeed, they are most potent in potting : Your 
Dane, your German, and your swag-bellied Hollander 
— Drink, ho! — are nothing to your English." Cassio 
asks: "Is your Englishman so expert in his drink- 
ing?" lago retorts: "Why, he drinks you, with 
facility, your Dane dead drunk," and gains, the 
speaker explains, easy mastery over the German 
and the Hollander. 

A further stroke of Shakespeare's social criticism 
hits the thoughtless pursuit of novelty, which in- 
fected the nation and found vent in Shakespeare's 
day in the patronage of undignified shows and sports. 
When Trinculo, perplexed by the outward aspect of 



186 SHAKESPEARE AND PATRIOTISM 

the hideous Cahban, mistakes him for a fish, he re- 
marks: ''Were I in England now, as once I was, and 
had but this fish painted, not a hohday fool there 
but would give a piece of silver: there would this 
monster make a man; any strange beast there makes 
a man: when they will not give a doit to relieve a 
lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead 
Indian." 

Shakespeare seems slyly to confess a personal 
conviction of defective balance in the popular judg- 
ment when he makes the first grave-digger remark 
that Hamlet was sent into England because he was 
mad. 

"He shall recover his wits there," the old clown 
suggests, ''or if he do not, 'tis no great matter there." 

"Why?" asks Hamlet. 

"Twill not be seen in him there; there the men 
are as mad as he." 

So, too, in the emphatically patriotic play of 
Henry V., Shakespeare implies that he sees some 
purpose in the Frenchman's jibes at the foggy, raw, 
and dull climate of England, which engenders in its 
inhabitants, the Frenchman argues, a frosty temper- 
ament, an ungenial coldness of blood. Nor does the 
dramatist imply dissent from the French marshal's 
suggestion that Englishmen's great meals of beef 
impair the efficiency of their intellectual armour. 
The point of the reproof is not blunted by the sub- 
sequent admission of a French critic in the same 
scene to the effect that, however robustious and 
rough in manner Englishmen may be, they have 
the unmatchable courage of the English breed of 
mastiffs. To credit men with the highest virtues of 
which dogs are capable is a grudging compliment. 



THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF PATRIOTISM 187 



To sum up. The Shakespearean drama enjoins 
those who love their country wisely to neglect no 
advantage that nature offers in the way of resisting 
unjust demands upon it; to remember that her 
prosperity depends on her conmiand of the sea, — 
of 'Hhe silver sea, which serves it in the office of a 
wall, or as a moat defensive to a house against the 
envy of less happier lands '*; to hold firm in the 
memory 'Hhe dear souls" who have made ''her 
reputation through the world"; to subject at need 
her faults and frailties to criticism and rebuke; and 
finally to treat with disdain those in places of power, 
who make of no accoimt their responsibilities to the 
past as well as to the present and the future. The 
political, social, and physical conditions of his 
country have altered since Shakespeare lived. Eng- 
land has ceased to be an island-power. The people 
rule instead of the king. Social responsibilities 
are more widely acknowledged. But the drama- 
tist's doctrine of patriotism has lost little of its 
pristine vitality, and is relevant to current affairs. 



IX 

A PERIL OF SHAKESPEAREAN 
RESEARCH ^ 

For some years past scarcely a month passes without 
my receipt of a communication from a confiding 
stranger, to the effect that he has discovered some 
piece of information concerning Shakespeare which 
has hitherto eluded research. Very often has a cor- 
respondent put himself to the trouble of forwarding 
a photograph of the title-page of a late sixteenth or 
early seventeenth century book, on which has been 
scrawled in old-fashioned script the famihar name of 
William Shakespeare. At intervals, which seem to 
recur with mathematical regularity, I receive intelli- 
gence that a portrait of the poet, of which nothing is 
hitherto known, has come to light in some recondite 
comer of England or America, and it is usually added 
that a contemporary inscription settles all doubt of 
authenticity. 

I wish to speak with respect and gratitude of 
these confidences. I welcome them, and have no 
wish to repress them. But truth does not permit 
me to affirm that such as have yet reached me have 
done more than enlarge my conception of the scope 

^ This paper was first printed in The Author, October, 1903. 
188 



GEORGE PEELE'S ALLEGED LETTER 189 

of human credulity. I look forward to the day when 
the postman shall, through the generosity of some 
appreciative reader of my biography of Shakespeare, 
deliver at my door an autograph of the dramatist of 
which nothing has been heard before, or a genuine 
portrait of contemporary date, the existence of which 
has never been suspected. But up to the moment 
of writing, despite the good intentions of my cor- 
respondents, no experience of the kind has befallen 
me. 

There is something pathetic in the frequency 
with which correspondents, obviously of unblem- 
ished character and most generous instinct, send me 
almost tearful expressions of regret that I should 
have hitherto ignored one particular document, 
which throws (in their eyes) a curious gleam on the 
dramatist's private life. At least six times a year 
am I reminded how it is recorded in more than one 
obscure eighteenth-century periodical that the dram- 
atist, George Peele, wrote to his friend Marie or 
Marlowe, in an extant letter, of a merry meeting 
which was held at a place called the '^ Globe." 
Whether the rendezvous were tavern or playhouse 
is left undetermined. The assembled company, I 
am assured, included not merely Edward Alleyn the 
actor, and Ben Jonson, but Shakespeare himself. 
Together these celebrated men are said to have dis- 
cussed a passage in the new play of Hamlet. The 
reported talk is at the best tame prattle. Yet, if 
Shakespeare be anywhere revealed in unconstrained 
intercourse with professional associates, no biog- 
rapher deserves pardon for overlooking the revela- 
tion, however disappointing be its purport. 

Unfortunately for this neglected intelligence, the 



190 A PERIL OF SHAKESPEAREAN RESEARCH 

letter in question is an eighteenth-century fabrica- 
tion. It is a forgery of no intrinsic brilhance or wit. 
It bears on its dull face marks of guilt which could 
only escape the notice of the uninformed. It is not 
likely to mislead the critical. Nevertheless it has 
deceived many an uncritical reader, and has con- 
stantly found its way into print without meeting 
serious confutation. It may therefore be worth 
while setting its true origin and subsequent history 
on record. No endeavour is likely in all the circum- 
stances of the case to prevent an occasional resurrec- 
tion of the meagre spectre; but at present it appears 
to walk in various quarters quite unimpeded, and 
an endeavour to lay it may not be without its uses. 



II 

^ Through the first half of 1763 there was pubHshed 
in London a monthly magazine called the Theatrical 
Review, or Annals of the Drama, an anonymous 
miscellany of dramatic biography and criticism. It 
was a colourless contribution to the journalism of the 
day, and lacked powers of endurance. It ceased 
at the end of six months. The six instalments were 
re-issued as ^'Volume I." at the end of June 1763; 
but that volume had no successor. ^ 

All that is worth noting of the Theatrical Review 
of 1763 now is that among its contributors was an 
extremely interesting personality. He was a young 

■^ Other independent publications of similar character appeared 
under the identical title of The Theatrical Review both in 1758 
and 1772. The latter collected the ephemeral dramatic criticisms 
of John Potter, a well-known writer for the stage. 



GEORGE STEEVENS 191 

man of good education and independent means, who 
had chambers in the Temple, and was enthusiastically 
applying himself to a study of Shakespeare and 
Elizabethan dramatic hterature. His name, George 
Steevens, acquired in later years world-wide fame 
as that of the most learned of Shakespearean com- 
mentators. Of the real value of Steevens's scholar- 
ship no question is admissible, and his reputation 
justly grew with his years. Yet Steevens's temper 
was singularly perverse and mischievous. His con- 
fidence in his own powers led him to contemn the 
powers of other people. He enjoyed nothing so 
much as mystifying those who were engaged in the 
same pursuits as himself, and his favourite method 
of mystification was to announce anonjnnaously the 
discovery of documents which owed all their existence 
to his own ingenuity. This, he admitted, was his 
notion of ''fun." Whenever the whim seized him, 
he would in gravest manner reveal to the Press, or 
even contrive to bring to the notice of a learned 
society, some alleged relic in manuscript or in stone 
which he had deliberately manufactured. His sole 
aim was to recreate himself with laughter at the 
perplexity that such unholy pranks aroused. It is 
one of these Puck-hke tricks on Steevens's part that 
has spread confusion among those of my corre- 
spondents, who allege that Peele has handed down to 
us a personal reminiscence of the great dramatist..^^ 
The Theatrical Review, in its second number, 
offered an anonjrmous biography of the great actor 
and theatrical manager of Shakespeare's day, Ed- 
ward Alleyn. This biography was clearly one of 
Steevens's earliest efforts. It is for the most part an 
innocent compilation. But it contains one passage 



192 A PERIL OF SHAKESPEAREAN RESEARCH 

in its author's characteristic vein of mischief. Mid- 
way in the essay the reader is solemnly assured that 
a brand-new contemporary reference to AUeyn's 
eminent associate Shakespeare was at his disposal. 
The new story '' carries with it" (asserts the writer) 
''all the air of probabiHty and truth, and has never 
been in print before." ''A gentleman of honour and 
veracity/' run the next sentences, which were de- 
signed to put the unwary student off his guard, ''in 
the commission of the peace for Middlesex, has shown 
us a letter dated in the year 1600, which he assures 
us has been in the possession of his family, by the 
mother's side, for a long series of years, and which 
bears all the marks of antiquity." The superscrip- 
tion was interpreted to run: "For Master Henrie 
Marie, livynge at the sygne of the rose by the palace.'^ 
There follows at length the paper of which the 
family of the honourable and veracious gentleman 
"in the commission of the peace for Middlesex" 
had become possessed "by the mother's side." The 
words were these: — 

"Friende Marle, 

"I must desyre that my syster hyr 
watche, and the cookerie booke you promysed, may 
be sent by the man. I never longed for thy company 
more than last night ; we were all very merrye at the 
Globe, when Ned AUeyn did not scruple to affyrme 
pleasantely to thy friend Will, that he had stolen his 
speech about the quality es of an actor's excellencye, 
in Hamlet hys tragedy e, from conversations many- 
fold which had passed between them, and opinyons 
given by Allen touchinge the subject. Shakespeare 
did not take this talke in good sorte ; but Jonson put 
an end to the stryfe with wittielie saying: "This 
affaire needeth no contentione; you stole it from 



CLUMSINESS OF THE FORGERY 193 

Ned, no doubt; do not marvel; have you not seen 
him act tymes out of number"? 
'^Beheve me most syncerelie, 

^'Harrie, 

^'Thyne, 

^'G. Peel." 

The text of this strangely-spelt, strangely-worded 
epistle, with its puny efforts at a jest, was succeeded 
by a suggestion that '^G. Peel," the alleged signatory, 
could be none other than George Peele, the drama- 
tist, who achieved reputation in Shakespeare's early 
days, and was an industrious collector of anecdotes. 

Thus the impish Steevens baited his hook. The 
sport which followed must have exceeded his ex- 
pectations. Any one familiar with the bare outline 
of EUzabethan hterary history should have perceived 
that a trap had been set. The letter was assigned 
to the year 1600. Shakespeare's play of Hamlet, to 
the performance of which it unconcernedly refers, 
was not produced before 1602; at that date George 
Peele had lain full four years in his grave. Peele 
could never have passed the portals of the theatre 
called the ''Globe"; for it was not built until 1599. 
No historic tavern of the name is known. The sur- 
name of the person, to whom the letter was pretend- 
ed to have been addressed, is suspicious. ''Marie" 
was one way of spelling "Marlowe" at a period when 
forms of surnames varied with the caprice of the 
writer. The great dramatist, Christopher Marie, or 
Marloe, or Marlowe, had died in 1593. "Henrie 
Marie" is counterfeit coinage of no doubtful stamp. 

The language and the style of the letter are un- 
deserving of serious examination. They are of a far 
later period than the Elizabethan age. They cannot 



194 A PERIL OF SHAKESPEAREAN RESEARCH 

be dated earlier than 1763. Safely might the heavi- 
est odds be laid that in no year of the reign of Queen 
EHzabeth ''did friende Marie promyse G. Peel his 
syster that he would send hyr watche and the cook- 
erie book by the man/' or that ''Ned AUeyn made 
pleasante affirmation to G. Peel of friend Will's theft 
of the speech in Hamlet concerning an actor's ex- 
cellencye." 

From top to toe the imposture is obvious. But 
the general reader of the eighteenth century was 
confiding, unsuspicious, greedy of novel information. 
The description of the source of the document 
seemed to him precise enough to silence doubt. 



Ill 

The Theatrical Review of 1673 succeeded in 
launching the fraud on a quite triumphal progress. 
Again and again, as the century advanced, was G. 
Peel's declaration to "friende Marie" paraded, with- 
out hint of its falsity, before snappers-up of Shake- 
spearean trifles. Seven years after its first publica- 
tion, the epistle found admission in a slightly altered 
setting to so reputable a periodical as the Annual 
Register. Burke was still directing that useful pub- 
lication, and whatever information the Register 
shielded, was reckoned to be of veracity. "G. Peel" 
and "friende Marie" were there in the year 1770, 
suffered to exchange their confidences in the most 
honourable environment. 

Another seven years passed, and in 1777 there 
appeared an ambitious work of reference, entitled 
Biographia Literaria, or a Biographical History of 



THE PROGRESS OF THE FRAUD 195 

Literature, which gave its author, John Berkenhout, 
a free-thinking physician, his chief claim to re- 
membrance. Steevens was a friend of Berkenhout, 
and helped him in the preparation of the book. Into 
his account of Shakespeare, the credulous physician 
introduced quite honestly the fourteen-year old 
forgery. The reputed date of 1600, which the sup- 
posititious justice of the peace had given it in the 
Theatrical Review, was now suppressed. Berkenhout 
confined his comment to the halting reminiscence: 
''Whence I copied this letter I do not recollect; but 
I remember that at the time of transcribing it, I had 
no doubt of its authenticity." 

Thrice had the trick been worked effectively in 
conspicuous places before Steevens died in 1800. 
But the evil that he did lived after him, and within 
a year of his death the imposture renewed its youth. 
A correspondent, who concealed his identity under 
the signature of ''Grenovicus" {i.e., of Greenwich), 
sent Peel's letter in 1801 to the Gentleman^ s Maga- 
zine, a massive repertory of useful knowledge. There 
it was duly reprinted in the nimiber for June. '' Gren- 
ovicus" had the assurance to claim the letter as his 
own discovery. ''To my knowledge," he wrote, "it 
has never yet appeared in print." He refrained 
from indicating how he had gained access to it, but 
congratulated himself and the readers of the Gentle- 
man's Magazine on the valiant feast that he pro- 
vided for them. His action was apparently taken 
by the readers of the Gentleman^ s Magazine at his 
own valuation. 

Meanwhile the discerning critic was not alto- 
gether passive. Isaac D' Israeli denounced the fraud 
in his Curiosities of Literature; but he and others did 



196 A PERIL OF SHAKESPEAREAN RESEARCH 

their protesting gently. The fraud looked to the 
expert* too shamefaced to merit a vigorous on- 
slaught. He imagined the spurious epistle must 
die of its own inanity. In this he miscalculated 
the credulity of the general reader. ''Grenovicus" 
of the Gentleman's Magazine had numerous disciples. 

Many a time during the past century has his 
exploit been repeated. Even so acute a scholar as 
Alexander Dyce thought it worth while to reprint 
the letter in 1829 in the first edition of his collected 
works of George Peele (Vol. I., page 111), although he 
declined to pledge himself to its authenticity. The 
latest historian of Dulwich College ^ has admitted it 
to his text with too mildly worded a caveat. Often 
more recently has "G. Peel" emerged from seclusion 
to darken the page of a modern popular magazine. 
I have met him unabashed during the present century 
in two literary periodicals of repute — in the Academy 
(of London), in the issue of the 18th of January, 
1902, and in the Poet Lore (of Philadelphia), in the 
following April number. Future disinterments may 
safely be prophesied. In the jungle of the Annual 
Register or the Gentleman's Magazine the forgery 
lurks unchallenged, and there will always be inex- 
perienced explorers, who from time to time will run 
the unhallowed thing to earth there, and bring it 
forth as a new and unsuspected truth. 

Perhaps forgery is too big a word to apply to 
Steevens's concoction. Others worked at later peri- 
ods on lines of mystification similar to his; but, un- 
like his disciples, he did not seek from his misdirected 
ingenuity pecuniary gain or even notoriety. He 
never set his name to this invention of "Peel" and 

^ William Young's History of Dulwich College, 1889, H-, 41-2. 



A WARNING TO THE UNWARY 197 

''Marie," and their insipid chatter about Hamlet at 
the ''Globe." Steevens's sole aim was to delude 
the unwary. It is difficult to detect humour in the 
endeavour. But the perversity of the human in- 
tellect has no hmits. This ungainly example of it 
is only worth attention because it has sailed under 
its false colours without very serious molestation 
for one hundred and forty-three years. 



X 

SHAKESPEARE IN FRANCE 



Nothing but good can come of a comparative study 
of English and French Hterature. The pohtical inter- 
course of the two countries has involved them in an 
endless series of broils. But between the literatures 
of the two countries friendly relations have sub- 
sisted for over five centuries. In the literary sphere 
the interchange of neighbourly civilities has known 
no interruption. The same Hterary forms have not 
appealed to the tastes of the two nations; but differ- 
ences of aesthetic temperament have not prevented 
the literature of the one from levying substantial 
loans on the Hterature of the other, and that with a 
freedom and a frequency which were calculated to 
breed discontent between any but the most cordial 
of alHes. While the literary geniuses of the two 
nations have pursued independent ideals, they have 
viewed as welcome courtesies the willingness and 
readiness of the one to borrow sustenance of the 
other on the road. It is unlikely that any full or 
formal balance-sheet of such lendings and borrowings 

^ This paper was first printed in The Nineteenth Century, 
June, 1899. 
198 



LITERARY RELATIONS 199 

will ever be forthcoming, for it is felt instinctively 
by literary accountants and their clients on both 
shores of the English Channel that the debts on 
the one side keep a steady pace with the debts on 
the other, and there is no balance to be collected. 

No recondite research is needed to establish 
this general view of the situation. It is well known 
how the poetic career of Chaucer, the earUest of 
great English poets, was begun under French masters. 
The greatest poem of mediaeval France, the Roman 
de la Rose, was turned into EngHsh by his youthful 
pen, and the chief French poet of the day, Eustace 
Deschamps, held out to him the hand of fellowship 
in the enthusiastic halade, in which he apostrophised 
'' le grand translateur, noble Geoff roi Chaucer." 
Following Chaucer's example, the great poets of 
Elizabeth's reign and of James the First's reign most 
liberally and most literally assimilated the verse of 
their French contemporaries, Ronsard, Du Bellay^ 
and Desportes.^ Early in the seventeenth century. 
Frenchmen returned the comphment by naturahsing 
in French translations the prose romances of Sir 
PhiHp Sidney and Robert Greene, the philosophical 
essays of Bacon, and the ethical and theological 
writings of Bishop Joseph Hall. From the acces- 
sion of Charles the Second until that of George 
the Third, the English drama framed itself on 
French models, and Pope, who long filled the throne 

^ In the Introduction to a collection of Elizabethan Sonnets, 
published in Messrs Constable's re-issue of Arber's English 
Garner (1904), the present writer has shown that numerous son- 
nets, which Elizabethan writers issued as original poems, were 
literal translations from the French of Ronsard, Du Bellay, and 
Desportes. Numerous loans of like character were levied silently 
on many Italian authors. 



200 SHAKESPEARE IN FRANCE 

of a literary dictator in England, acknowledged dis- 
cipleship to Boileau. A little later the literary 
philosophers of France — Rousseau and the Encyclo- 
pedistes — drew nutrition from the writings of Hobbes 
and Locke. French novel-readers of the eighteenth 
century found their chief joy in the tearful emotions 
excited by the sentimentalities of Richardson and 
Sterne. French novel-writers one hundred and 
thirty years ago had small chance of recognition if 
they disdained to traffic in the lachr3rDiose wares 
which the Enghsh novehsts had brought into fashion. 

At the present moment the cultured EngHshman 
finds his most palatable fiction in the pubhcations 
of Paris. Within recent memory the English play- 
goer viewed with impatience any theatrical pro- 
gramme which lacked a Parisian flavour. The late 
Sir Henry Irving, who, during the past generation, 
sought to sustain the best traditions of the English 
drama, produced in his last years two original 
plays, Robespierre and Dante, by the doyen of living 
French dramatists, M. Sardou. Complementary 
tendencies are visible across the Channel. The 
French stage often offers as cordial a reception to 
plays of English manufacture as is offered in London 
to the plays derived from France. No histrionic 
event attracts higher interest in Paris than the 
assumption by a great actor or actress of a Shake- 
spearean role for the first time ; and French dramatic 
critics have been known to generate such heat in 
debates over the right conception of a Shakespearean 
character that their differences have required ad- 
justment at the sword's point. 

Of greater interest is it to note that in all the 
cultivated centres of France a new and unparalleled 



FRENCH STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 201 

energy is devoted to-day to the study of English 
literature of both the present and the past. The 
research recently expended on the topic by French 
scholars has not been excelled in Germany, and has 
rarely been equalled in England. Critical biograph- 
ies of James Thomson (of The Seasons), of Burns, of 
Young, and of Wordsworth have come of late from 
the pens of French professors of English literature, 
and their volumes breathe a minute accuracy and 
a fulness of sympathetic knowledge which are cer- 
tainly not habitual to English professors of Eng- 
lish literature. This scholarly movement in France 
shows signs of rapid extension. Each summer vaca- 
tion sees an increase in the number of French visitors 
to the British Museum reading-room, who are en- 
gaged on recondite researches into English literary 
history. The new zeal of Frenchmen for English 
studies claims the most cordial acknowledgment of 
EngHsh scholars, and it is appropriate that the 
most coveted lectureship on English literature in an 
English University — the Clark lectureship at Trinity 
College, Cambridge — should have been bestowed 
last year on the learned professor of English at the 
Sorbonne, M. Beljame, author of Le Public et les 
Hommes de Lettres en Angleterre au XVIIP Siecle. 
M. Beljame's unexpected death (on September 17, 
1906), shortly after his work at Cambridge was com- 
pleted, is a loss ahke to EngUsh and French letters. 

II 

In view of the growth of the French interest in 
English literary history, it was to be expected that 
serious efforts should be made in France to deter- 
mine the character and dimensions of the influence 



202 SHAKESPEARE IN FRANCE 

exerted on French literature by the greatest of all 
English men of letters — by Shakespeare. That work 
has been undertaken by M. Jusserand. In 1898 he 
gave to the world the results of his investigation in 
his native language. Subsequently, with a welcome 
consideration for the linguistic incapacities of Shake- 
speare's countrymen, he repeated his conclusions in 
their tongue. ^ The English translation is embel- 
lished with many pictorial illustrations of historic 
interest and value. 

Among French writers on English literature, 
M. Jusserand is the most voluminous and the most 
widely informed. His career differs in an important 
particular from that of his countrymen who pursue 
the same field of study. He is not by profession a 
teacher or writer : he is a diplomatist, and now holds 
the high office of French ambassador to the United 
States of America. M. Jusserand has treated in his 
books of almost all periods of English literary history, 
and he has been long engaged on an exhaustive 
Literary History of the English People, of which the 
two volumes already published bring the narrative 
as far as the close of the Civil Wars. 

M. Jusserand enjoys the rare, although among 
modem Frenchmen by no means unexampled, 
faculty of writing with almost equal ease and felicity 
in both French and Enghsh. His walk in life gives 
him a singularly cathohc outlook. His learning is 
profound, but he is not overburdened by it, and he 
preserves his native gaiety of style even when solving 
crabbed problems of bibliography. He is at times 
discursive, but he is never tedious; and he shows 

^ Shakespeare in France under the Ancien Regime, by J. J. 
Jusserand. London: T. Fisher Unwin. 1899- 



M. JUSSERAND'S LITERARY WORK 203 

no trace of that philological pedantry and narrow- 
ness or obliquity of critical vision which the detailed 
study of literary history has been known to breed 
in English and German investigators. While M. 
Jusserand betrays all the critical independence of 
his compatriot, M. Taine, his habit of careful and 
laborious research illustrates with peculiar vivid- 
ness the progress which English scholarship has made 
in France since M. Taine completed his sparkling 
survey of English literature in 1864. 

M. Jusserand handles the theme of Shakespeare 
in France under the Ancien Regime with all the 
lightness of touch and wealth of minute detail to 
which he has accustomed his readers. Nowhere 
have so many facts been brought together in order 
to illustrate the literary intercourse of Frenchmen 
and Englishmen between the sixteenth and the nine- 
teenth centuries. It is true that his opening chapters 
have little concern with Shakespeare, but their in- 
trinsic interest and novelty atone for their irrele- 
vance. They shed a flood of welcome light on that 
interchange of literary information and ideas which 
is a constant feature in the literary history of the 
two countries. 

Many will read here for the first time of the 
great poet Ronsard's visits to this country; of the 
distinguished company of English actors which de- 
lighted the court of Henry IV. of France; and of 
Ben Jonson's discreditable drunken exploits in the 
French capital when he went thither as tutor to 
Sir Walter Raleigh's son. To these episodes might 
well be added the pleasant personal intercourse of 
Francis Bacon's brother, Anthony, with the great 
French essayist Montaigne, when the Englishman 



204 SHAKESPEARE IN FRANCE 

was sojourning at Bordeaux in 1583. Montaigne's 
Essays achieved hardly less fame in Elizabethan 
England than in France. Both Shakespeare and 
Bacon gave proof of indebtedness to them. 

By some freak of fortune Shakespeare's fame 
was slow in crossing the English Channel. The 
French dramatists of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries lived and died in the paradoxical faith 
that the British drama reached its apogee in the 
achievement of the Scottish Latinist, George Bu- 
chanan, who was reckoned in France ''prince of 
the poets of our day." In Buchanan's classical 
tragedies Montaigne played a part, while he was a 
student at Bordeaux. His tragedy of Jephtha 
achieved exceptional fame in sixteenth century 
France; three Frenchmen of literary repute rendered 
it independently into their own language, and each 
rendering went through several editions. Another 
delusion which French men of letters cherished not 
only during Shakespeare's lifetime but through three 
or four generations after his death, was that Sir 
Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, and the father of 
Lord Chancellor Bacon were the greatest authors 
which England had begotten or was likely to beget. 
French enthusiasm for the suggestive irony of 
More's Latin romance of Utopia outran that of his 
fellow-countrymen. A French translation antici- 
pated the earliest rendering of the work in the 
author's native tongue. No less than two inde- 
pendent French versions of Sir Philip Sidney's 
voluminous fiction of Arcadia were circulating in 
France one hundred and twenty years before the 
like honour was paid to any work of Shakespeare. 

Shakespeare's work first arrived in France tow- 



EARLY CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARE 205 

ard the close of the seventeenth century. French- 
men were staggered by its originaHty. They per- 
ceived the dramatist's colossal breaches of classical 
law. They were shocked by his freedom of speech. 
When Louis the Fourteenth's Hbrarian placed on 
the shelves of the Royal Library in Paris a copy of 
the Second FoUo of his works which had been pub- 
lished in London in 1632, he noted in his catalogue 
that Shakespeare ''has a rather fine imagination; 
he thinks naturally; but these fine qualities are 
obscured by the filth he introduces into his come- 
dies." An increasing mass of pedestrian literature 
was imported into France from England through 
the middle and late years of the seventeenth century. 
Yet Shakespeare had to wait for a fair hearing there 
till the eighteenth century. 

Then it was very gradually that Shakespeare's 
pre-eminence was realised by French critics. It is 
to Voltaire that Frenchmen owe a full knowledge 
of Shakespeare. Voltaire's method of teaching 
Shakespeare to his countrymen was characteristically 
cynical. He studied him closely when he visited 
England as a young man. At that period of his 
career he not merely praised him with discerning 
caution, but he paid him the flattery of imitation. 
Voltaire's tragedy of Brutus betrays an intimate 
acquaintance with Shakespeare's Julius Ccesar. His 
Eryphile was the product of many perusals of Ham- 
let. His Zaire is a pale reflection of Othello. But 
when Voltaire's countrymen showed a tendency to 
better Voltaire's instruction, and one Frenchman 
conferred on Shakespeare the title of ''the god of 
the theatre," Voltaire resented the situation that he 
had himself created. He was at the height of his 



206 SHAKESPEARE IN FRANCE 

own fame, and he felt that his reputation as the first 
of French writers for the stage was in jeopardy. 

The last years of Voltaire's Hfe were therefore 
consecrated to an endeavour to dethrone the idol 
which his own hands had set up. Voltaire traded 
on the patriotic prejudices of his hearers, but his 
efforts to depreciate Shakespeare were very partially 
successful. Few writers of power were ready to 
second the soured critic, and after Voltaire's death 
the Shakespeare cult in France, of which he was the 
unwilling inaugurator, spread far and wide. 

In the nineteenth century Shakespeare was ad- 
mitted without demur into the French '' pantheon 
of literary gods." Classicists and romanticists vied 
in doing him honour. The classical painter Ingres 
introduced his portrait into his famous picture of 
''Homer's Cortege" (now in the Louvre). The 
romanticist Victor Hugo recognised only three men 
as memorable in the history of humanity, and 
Shakespeare was one of the three ; Moses and Homer 
were the other two. Alfred de Musset became a 
dramatist under Shakespeare's spell. To George 
Sand everything in literature seemed tame by the 
side of Shakespeare's poetry. The prince of ro- 
mancers, the elder Dumas, set the English drama- 
tist next to God in the cosmic system; ''After God," 
wrote Dumas, "Shakespeare has created most." 

Ill 

It would be easy to multiply eulogies of Shake- 
speare from French lips in the vein of Victor Hugo 
and Dumas — eulogies besides which the enthusiasm 
of many English critics appears cold and constrained. 
So unfaltering a note of admiration sounds gratefully 



FRENCH VERSIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 207 

in the ears of Shakespeare's countrymen. Yet on 
closer investigation there seems a rift within the lute. 
When one turns to the French versions of Shake- 
speare, for which the chief of Shakespeare's French 
encomiasts have made themselves responsible, an 
EngUshman is inclined to moderate his exultation 
in the French panegyrics. 

No one did more as an admiring critic and 
translator of Shakespeare than Jean Fran9ois Ducis, 
who prepared six of Shakespeare's greatest plays 
for the French stage at the end of the eighteenth 
century. Not only did Ducis introduce Shake- 
speare's masterpieces to thousands of his country- 
men who might otherwise never have heard of them, 
but his renderings of Shakespeare were turned into 
Italian and many languages of Eastern Europe. 
They spread the knowledge of Shakespeare's achieve- 
ment to the extreme boundaries of the European 
Continent. Apparently Ducis did his work under 
favourable auspices. He corresponded regularly 
with Garrick, and he was never happier than when 
studjdng Shakespeare's text with a portrait of 
Shakespeare at his side. Yet, in spite of Ducis' 
unquestioned reverence and his honourable inten- 
tions, all his translations of Shakespeare are gross 
perversions of their originals. It is not merely that 
he is verbally unfaithful. He revises the develop- 
ment of the plots; he gives the dramatis persoiice 
new names. 

Ducis' Othello was accounted his greatest triumph. 
The play shows Shakespeare's mastery of the art of 
tragedy at its highest stage of development, and 
rewards the closest study. But the French trans- 
lator ignored the great tragic conception which 



208 SHAKESPEARE IN FRANCE 

gives the drama its pith and movement. He con- 
verted the piece into a romance. Towards the 
end of his rendering lago's villanies are discovered 
by Othello; Othello and Desdemona are reconciled; 
and the Moor, exulting in his newly recovered 
happiness, pardons lago. The curtain falls on a 
dazzling scene of domestic bliss. 

Ducis frankly acknowledged that he was guilty 
of a somewhat strained interpretation of Shake- 
speare's tragic scheme, but he defended himself on 
the ground that French refinement and French sen- 
sitiveness could not endure the agonising violence 
of the true catastrophe. It is, indeed, the fact that 
the patrons of the Comedie Fran9aise strictly 
warned the adapter against revolting their feelings 
by reproducing the '^ barbarities" that character- 
ised the close of Shakespeare's tragic masterpiece. 

If so fastidious a flinching from tragic episode 
breathe the true French sentiment, what, we are 
moved to ask, is the significance of the unquaUfied 
regard which Ducis and his countrymen profess for 
Shakespearean drama? There seems a strange par- 
adox in the situation. The history of France proves 
that Frenchmen can face without quailing the direst 
tragedies which can be wrought in earnest off the 
stage. There is a startling inconsistency in the 
outcry of Ducis' French clients against the terror 
of Desdemona's murder. For the protests which 
Ducis reports on the part of the Parisians bear the 
date 1792. In that year the tragedy of the French 
Revolution — a tragedy of real life, grimmer than 
any that Shakespeare imagined — was being enacted 
in literal truth by the Parisian playgoers them- 
selves. It would seem that Ducis and his country- 



DUMAS'S VERSION OF HAMLET 209 

men deemed the purpose of art to be alone fulfilled 
when the artistic fabric was divorced from the ugly 
facts of life. 

A like problem is presented by Dimias' efforts 
in more pacific conditions to adapt Shakespeare for 
the Parisian stage. With his friend Paul Meurice 
Dumas prepared the version of Hamlet which long 
enjoyed a standard repute at the Comedie Fran9aise. 
Dumas' ecstatic adoration for Shakespeare's genius 
did not deter him, any more than Ducis was deterred 
by his more subdued veneration, from working havoc 
on the English text. Shakespeare's blank verse 
was necessarily turned into Alexandrines. That was 
comparatively immaterial. Of greater moment is 
it to note that the denouement of the tragedy was 
completely revolutionised by Dumas. The tragic 
climax is undermined. Hamlet's life is spared by 
Dumas. The hero's dying exclamation, ''The rest 
is silence," disappears from Dumas' version. At 
the close of the play the French translator makes 
the ghost rejoin his son and good-naturedly promise 
him indefinite prolongation of his earthly career. 
According to the gospel of Dumas, the tragedy of 
Hamlet ends, as soon as his and his father's wrongs 
have been avenged, in this fashion: — 

Hamlet. Et moi, vais-je rester, triste orphelin sur terre, 
A respirer cet air impregne de misere? . . . 
Est-ce que Dieu sur moi f era peser son bras, 
Pere? Et quel chatiment m'attend done? 

Le Fantome. " Tu vivras. 

Such defiant transgressions of the true Shake- 
spearean canon as those of which Ducis and Dumas 
stand convicted may well rouse the suspicion that 



210 SHAKESPEARE IN FRANCE 

the critical incense they burn at Shakespeare's shrine 
is offered with the tongue in the cheek. But that 
suspicion is not justified. Ducis and Dumas worship 
Shakespeare with a whole heart. Their misappre- 
hensions of his tragic conceptions are due, involun- 
tarily, to native temperament. In point of fact, 
Ducis and Dumas see Shakespeare through a dis- 
torting medium. The two Frenchmen were fully 
conscious of Shakespeare's towering greatness. They 
perceived intuitively that Shakespeare's tragedies 
transcended all other dramatic achievement. But 
their aesthetic sense, which, as far as the drama was 
concerned, was steeped in the classical spirit, set 
many of the essential features of Shakespeare's gen- 
ius outside the focus of their vision. 

To a Frenchman a tragedy of classical rank 
connotes '^ correctness," an absence of tumult, some 
observance of the classical law of unity of time, 
place, and action. The perpetration of crime in 
face of the audience outraged all classical conven- 
tions. Ducis and Dumas recognised involuntarily 
that certain characteristics of the Shakespearean 
drama could not live in the classical atmosphere 
of their own theatre. Excision, expansion, reduc- 
tion was inevitable before Shakespeare could breathe 
the air of the French stage. The grotesque per- 
versions of Ducis and Dumas were thus not the 
fruit of mere waywardness, or carelessness, or dis- 
honesty; they admit of philosophical explanation. 

By Englishmen they may be viewed with equa- 
nimity, if not with satisfaction. They offer strong 
proof of the irrepressible strength or catholicity of 
the appeal that Shakespeare's genius makes to the 
mind and heart of humanity. His spirit survived 



NODIER'S TRIBUTE 211 

the French efforts at mutilation. The GaUicised or 
classicised contortions of his mighty work did not 
destroy its saving virtue. There is ground for con- 
gratulation that Ducis' and Dumas' perversions of 
Shakespeare excited among Frenchmen almost as 
devoted an homage as the dramatist's work in its 
native purity and perfection claims of men whose 
souls are free of the fetters of classical tradition. 



rv 

If any still doubt the sincerity of the worship 
which is offered Shakespeare in France, I would 
direct the sceptic's attention to a pathetically simple 
tribute which was paid to the dramatist by a French 
student in the first year of the last century, when 
England and France were in the grip of the Napo- 
leonic War. It was then that a yoimg Frenchman 
proved beyond cavil by an ingenuous confession that 
the English poet, in spite of the racial differences of 
aesthetic sentiment, could touch a French heart more 
deeply than any French or classical author. In 
1801 there was published at Besan^on, ''de I'im- 
primerie de Metoyer," a very thin volume in small 
octavo, under fifty pages in length, entitled, Pensees 
de Shakespeare, Extraites de ses Ouvrages. No com- 
piler's name is mentioned, but there is no doubt that 
the book was from the pen of a precocious native 
of Besan^on, Charles Nodier, who was in later life 
to gain distinction as a bibliographer and writer of 
romance. 

This forgotten volume, of which no more than 
twenty-five copies were printed, and only two or 



212 SHAKESPEARE IN FRANCE 

three of these seem to survive, has escaped the 
notice of M. Jusserand. No copy of it is in the 
British Museum, or in La Bibhotheque de TArsenal, 
with which the author, Nodier, was long honourably 
associated as Hbrarian. I purchased it a few years 
ago by accident in a small collection of imperfectly 
catalogued Shakespeareana. Lurking in the rear 
of a very ragged regiment on the shelves of the 
auctioneer stood Charles Nodier's Pensees de Shake- 
speare. None competed with me for the prize. A 
very sUght effort dehvered into my hands the Httle 
chaplet of French laurel. 

The major part of the volume consists of 190 
numbered sentences — each a French rendering of 
an apophthegm or reflection drawn from Shake- 
speare's plays. The translator is not faithful to 
his Enghsh text, but his style is clear and often 
rises to eloquence. The book does not, however, 
owe its interest to Nodier's version of Shakespearean 
maxims. Nor can one grow enthusiastic over the 
dedication. ''A elle" — an unidentified fair-one to 
whom the youthful writer proffers his homage with 
respectful propriety. The salt of the httle volume 
hes in the ^'Observations PreUminaries," which 
cover less than five widely-printed pages. These 
observations breathe a genuine affection for Shake- 
speare's personahty and a sense of gratitude for his 
achievement in terms which no English admirer 
has excelled for tenderness and simphcity. 

''Shakespeare," writes this French worshipper, 
"is a friend whom Heaven has given to the un- 
happy of every age and every country." The writer 
warns us that he offers no eulogy of Shakespeare; 
that is to be found in the poet's works, which the 



NODIER'S PERSONAL DEVOTION 213 

Frenchman for his own part prefers to read and 
read again rather than waste time in praising them. 
''The features of Alexander ought only to be pre- 
served by Apelles." Nodier merely collects some 
of Shakespeare's thoughts on great moral truths 
which he thinks to be useful to the conduct of hfe. 
But such extracts, he admonishes his reader, supply 
no true knowledge of Shakespeare. " From Shake- 
speare's works one can draw forth a philosophy, but 
from no systems of philosophy could one construct 
one page of Shakespeare." Nodier concludes his 
''Observations" thus: — 

"I advise those who do not know Shakespeare to 
study him in himself. I advise those who know him 
already to read him again. ... I know him, but 
I must needs declare my admiration for him. I have 
reviewed my powers, and am content to cast a 
flower on his grave since I am not able to raise a 
monument to his memory." 

Language like this admits no questioning of 
its sincerity. Nodier' s modest tribute handsomely 
atones for his countrymen's misapprehensions of 
Shakespeare's tragic conceptions. None has phrased 
more delicately or more simply the sense of personal 
devotion, which is roused by close study of his 
work. 



XI 



THE COMMEMORATION OF SHAKE- 
SPEARE IN LONDON! 



The public memory is short. At the instant the 
suggestion that Shakespeare should receive the 
tribute of a great national monument in London is 
attracting general attention. In the ears of the vast 
majority of those who are taking part in the discus- 
sion the proposal appears to strike a new note. Few 
seem aware that a national memorial of Shakespeare 
has been urged on Londoners many times before. 
Thrice, at least, during the past eighty-five years has 
it exercised the public mind. 

At the extreme end of the year 1820, the well- 
known actor, Charles Mathews, set on foot a move- 
ment for the erection of "sl national monument 
to the immortal memory of Shakespeare.'' He 
pledged himself to enlist the support of the new 
King, George the Fourth, of members of the royal 
family, of '^ every man of rank and talent, every poet, 
artist, and sculptor." Mathews' endeavour achieved 

^ This paper was first printed in The Nineteenth Century and 
After, April, 1905. 
214 



SCHEMES FOR A NATIONAL MONUMENT 215 

only a specious success. George the Fourth readily 
gave his '^high sanction" to a London memorial. 
Sir Walter Scott, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Tom 
Moore, and Washington Irving were among the men 
of letters; Sir Thomas Lawrence, [Sir] Francis Chan- 
trey, and John Nash, the architect, were among the 
artists, who approved the general conception. For 
three or four years ink was spilt and breath was 
spent in the advocacy of the scheme. But nothing 
came of all the letters and speeches. 

In 1847 the topic was again broached. A com- 
mittee, which was hardly less influential than that 
of 1821, revived the proposal. Again no result 
followed. 

Seventeen years passed away, and then, in 1864, 
the arrival of the tercentenary of Shakespeare's 
birth seemed to many men of eminence in public life, 
in letters or in art, an appropriate moment at which 
to carry the design into effect. A third failure has 
to be recorded. 

The notion, indeed, was no child of the nine- 
teenth century which fathered it so ineffectually. 
It was familiar to the eighteenth. One eighteenth- 
century effort was fortunate enough to yield a little 
permanent fruit. To an eighteenth-century en- 
deavour to offer Shakespeare a national memorial in 
London was due the cenotaph in Westminster Abbey. 



II 

The suggestion of commemorating Shakespeare 
by means of a monument in London has thus some- 
thing more than a "smack of age" about it, some- 
thing more than a "relish of the saltness of time"; 



216 COMMEMORATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

there are points of view from which it might appear 
to be aheady ''blasted with antiquity." On only 
one of the previous occasions that the question was 
raised was the stage of discussion passed, and that 
was in the eighteenth century when the monument 
was placed in the Poets' Corner of Westminster 
Abbey. The issue was not felicitous. The memorial 
in the Abbey failed to satisfy the commemorative 
aspirations of the nation; it left it open to succeed- 
ing generations to reconsider the question, if it did 
not impose on them the obligation. Most of the 
poets, actors, scholars, and patrons of polite learn- 
ing, who in 1741 subscribed their guineas to the 
fund for placing a monument in Westminster Abbey, 
resented the sculpturesque caricature to which their 
subscriptions were applied. Pope, an original leader 
of the movement, declined to write an inscription for 
this national memorial, but scribbled some ironical 
verses beginning: — 

Thus Britons love me and preserve my fame. 

A later critic imagined Shakespeare's wraith pausing 
in horror by the familiar monument in the Abbey, 
and Ughtly misquoting Shelley's familiar lines: — 

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, . . . 
And long to imbuild it again. 

One of the most regrettable effects of the Abbey 
memorial, with its mawkish and irrelevant sentimen- 
tahty, has been to set a bad pattern for statues of 
Shakespeare. Posterity came to invest the design 
with some measure of sanctity. 

The nineteenth-century efforts were mere abor- 
tions. In 1821, in spite of George the Fourth's 
benevolent patronage, which included an unfulfilled 



CAUSES OF PAST FAILURE 217 

promise to pay the sum of 100 guineas, the total 
amount which was collected after six years' agitation 
was so small that it was returned to the subscribers. 
The accounts are extant in the Library of Shake- 
speare's Birthplace at Stratford-on-Avon. In 1847 
the subscriptions were more abundant, but all was 
then absorbed in the purchase of Shakespeare's 
Birthplace at Stratford; no money was available for 
a London memorial. In 1864 the expenses of organ- 
ising the tercentenary celebration in London by way 
of banquets, concerts, and theatrical performances, 
seem to have left no surplus for the purpose which 
the movement set out to fulfil. 

Ill 

The causes of the sweeping failure of the proposal 
when it came before the pubHc during the nineteenth 
century are worthy of study. There was no lack of 
enthusiasm among the promoters. Nor were their 
high hopes wrecked solely by pubhc apathy. The 
pubhc interest was never altogether dormant. More 
efficient causes of ruin were, firstly, the active hos- 
tility of some prominent writers and actors who de- 
claimed against all outward and visible commemora- 
tion of Shakespeare; and secondly, divisions in the 
ranks of supporters in regard to the precise form that 
the memorial ought to take. The censorious refusal 
of one section of the literary public to countenance 
any memorial at all, and the inability of another sec- 
tion, while promoting the endeavour, to concentrate 
its energies on a single acceptable form of commemor- 
ation had, as might be expected, a paralysing effect. 

''England," it was somewhat casuistically argued 



218 COMMEMORATION OF SHAKESPEAHE 

in 1864, ''has never been ungrateful to her poet; but 
the very depth and fervour of the reverence in which 
he is held have hitherto made it difficult for his 
scholars to agree upon any common proceeding in his 
name." Neither in 1864 nor at earlier and later 
epochs have Shakespearean scholars always formed 
among themselves a very happy family. That ami- 
able sentiment which would treat the realisation 
of the commemorative aim as a patriotic obhgation 
— as an obligation which no good citizen could hon- 
ourably repudiate — has often produced discord rather 
than harmony among the Shakespearean scholars 
who cherish it. One school of these has argued in 
the past for a work of sculpture, and has been op- 
posed by a cry for a college for actors, or a Shake- 
spearean theatre. ''We do not like the idea of a 
monument at all," wrote The Times on the 20th of 
January 1864. "Shakespeare," wrote Punch on the 
6th of February following, "needs no statue." In 
old days it was frequently insisted that, even if the 
erection of a London monument were desirable, 
active effort ought to be postponed until an adequate 
memorial had been placed in Stratford-on-Avon 
where the poet's memory had been hitherto inade- 
quately honoured. At the same time a band of 
students was always prepared to urge the chilling 
plea that the payment of any outward honour to 
Shakespeare was laboursome futility, was "wasteful 
and ridiculous excess." Milton's query: "What 
needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones?" has 
always been quoted to satiety by a vociferous section 
of the critics whenever the commemoration of Shake- 
speare has come under discussion. 



THE NEW PROPOSALS 219 

IV 

Once again the question of a national memorial of 
Shakespeare in London has been revived in condi- 
tions not wholly unhke those that have gone before. 
Mr Richard Badger, a veteran enthusiast for Shake- 
speare, who was educated in the poet's native place, 
has offered the people of London the sum of £3500 as 
the nucleus of a great Shakespeare Memorial Fund. 
The Lord Mayor of London has presided over a pub- 
lic meeting at the Mansion House, which has em- 
powered an influential committee to proceed with 
the work. The London County Council has promised 
to provide a site. With regard to the form that the 
memorial ought to take, a variety of irresponsible 
suggestions has been made. It has now been au- 
thoritatively determined to erect a sculptured monu- 
ment on the banks of the Thames. ^ 

The propriety of visibly and outwardly com- 
memorating Shakespeare in the capital city of the 
Empire has consequently become once more an 
urgent public question. The pubhc is invited anew 
to form an opinion on the various points at issue. No 
expression of opinion should carry weight which 
omits to take into account past experience as well as 
present conditions and possibilities. If regard for 

^ The proceedings of the committee which was formed in the 
spring of 1905 have been dilatory. Mr Badger informs me that 
he paid the organisers, nearly two years ago, the sum of ,£500 
for preliminary expenses, and deposited bonds to the value of 
.£3,000 with Lord Avebury, the treasurer of the committee. The 
delay is assigned to the circumstance that the London County 
Council, which is supporting the proposal, is desirous of associ- 
ating it with the great Council Hall which it is preparing to erect 
on the south side of the Thames, and that it has not yet been 
found practicable to invite designs for that work (Oct. 1, 1906). 



220 COMMEMORATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

the public interest justify a national memorial in 
London, it is most desirable to define the principles 
whereby its precise form should be determined. 

In one important particular the consideration of 
the subject to-day is simpler than when it was 
debated on former occasions. Differences existed, 
then as now, in regard to the propriety of erecting a 
national memorial of Shakespeare in London; but 
almost all who interested themselves in the matter 
in the nineteenth century agreed that the public 
interest justified, if it did not require, the preserva- 
tion from decay or demolition of the buildings at 
Stratford-on-Avon with which Shakespeare's life 
was associated. So long as those buildings were 
in private hands, every proposal to conamemorate 
Shakespeare in London had to meet a formidable 
objection which was raised on their behalf. If the 
nation undertook to commemorate Shakespeare at 
all, it should make its first aim (it was argued) the 
conversion into pubHc property of the surviving 
memorials of Shakespeare's career at Stratford. 
The scheme of the London memorial could not be 
thoroughly discussed on its merits while the claims 
of Stratford remained unsatisfied. It was deemed 
premature, whether or no it were justifiable, to en- 
tertain any scheme of commemoration which left 
the Stratford buildings out of account. 

A natural sentiment connected Shakespeare more 
closely with Stratford-on-Avon than with any other 
place. Whatever part London played in his career, 
the pubhc mind was dominated by the fact that he 
was born at Stratford, died, and was buried there. If 
he left Stratford in youth in order to work out his 
destiny in London, he returned to it in middle life 



COMMEMORATION AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON 221 

in order to end his days there '^in ease, retirement, 
and the conversation of his friends." 

In spite of this widespread feeling, it proved no 
easy task, nor one capable of rapid fulfilment, to 
consecrate in permanence to public uses the extant 
memorials of Shakespeare at Stratford-on-Avon. 
Stratford was a place of pilgrimage for admirers of 
Shakespeare from early days in the seventeenth 
century — soon, in fact, after Shakspeare's death in 
1616. But local veneration did not prevent the 
demolition in 1759, by a private owner, of New Place, 
Shakespeare's last residence. That act of vandal- 
ism was long in provoking any effective resentment. 
Garrick, by means of his Jubilee Festival of 1769, 
effectively, if somewhat theatrically, called the at- 
tention of the English public to the claims of the 
town to the affectionate regard of lovers of the great 
dramatist. Nevertheless, it was left to the nine- 
teenth century to dedicate in perpetuity to the pub- 
lic service the places which were the scenes of 
Shakespeare's private life in his native town. 

Charles Mathews' effort of 1821 took its rise in 
an endeavour to purchase in behalf of the nation the 
vacant site of Shakespeare's demolished residence 
of New Place, with the great garden attached to it. 
But that scheme was overweighted by the incorpora- 
tion with it of the plan for a London monument, and 
both collapsed ignominiously. In 1835 a strong 
committee was formed at Stratford to commemorate 
the poet's connection with the town. It was called 
'Hhe Monumental Committee," and had for its ob- 
ject, firstly, the repair of Shakespeare's tomb in the 
Parish Church; and secondly, the preservation and 
restoration of all the Shakespearean buildings in the 



222 COMMEMORATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

town. Subscriptions were limited to £1, and all the 
members of the royal family, including the Princess 
Victoria, who two years later came to the throne, 
figured, with other leading personages in the nation's 
life, in the Hst of subscribers. But the subscrip- 
tions only produced a sum sufficient to carry out 
the first purpose of the Monumental Committee — 
the repair of the tomb. 

In 1847 the sale by public auction was announced 
of the house in which Shakespeare was bom. It had 
long been a show-place in private hands. A general 
feehng declared itself in favour of the purchase of 
the house for the nation. Public sentiment was in 
accord with the ungrammatical grandiloquence of 
the auctioneer, the famous Robins, whose advertise- 
ment of the sale included the sentence: ''It is trusted 
the feeling of the country will be so evinced that the 
structure may be secured, hallowed and cherished 
as a national monument almost as imperishable as 
the poet's fame." A subscription list was headed 
by Prince Albert with £250. A distinguished com- 
mittee was formed under the presidency of Lord 
Morpeth (afterwards the seventh Earl of Carhsle), 
then Chief Commissioner of Woods and Forests, who 
offered to make his department perpetual conserva- 
tors of the property. (That proposal was not ac- 
cepted.) Dickens, Macaulay, Lord Lytton, and the 
historian Grote were all active in promoting the 
movement, and it proved successful. The property 
was duly secured by a private trust in behalf of the 
nation. The most important house identified with 
Shakespeare's career in Stratford was thus effectively 
protected from the risks that are always inherent 
in private ownership. The step was not taken with 



THE PURCHASE OF NEW PLACE 223 

undue haste; two hundred and thirty-one years had 
elapsed since Shakespeare's death. 

Fourteen years later, in very similar circum- 
stances, the still vacant site of Shakespeare's de- 
molished residence. New Place, with the great garden 
behind it, and the adjoining house, were acquired by 
the public. A new Shakespeare Fund, to which the 
Prince Consort subscribed £100, and Miss Burdett- 
Coutts (afterwards Baroness Burdett-Coutts) £600, 
was formed not only to satisfy this purpose, but to 
provide the means of equipping a Hbrary and museum 
which were contemplated at the Birthplace, as well 
as a second museum which was to be provided on the 
New Place property. It was appropriate to make 
these buildings depositories of authentic relics and 
books which should illustrate the poet's life and work. 
This national Shakespeare Fund was actively pro- 
moted, chiefly by the late Mr Halliwell-Phillipps, for 
more than ten years; a large sum of money was col- 
lected, and the aims with which the Fund was set 
on foot were to a large extent fulfilled. It only 
remained to organise on a permanent legal basis the 
completed Stratford Memorial of Shakespeare. By 
an Act of Parliament passed in 1891 the two prop- 
erties of New Place and the Birthplace were definite- 
ly formed into a single public trust ^'for and in behalf 
of the nation." The trustees were able in 1892, out 
of their surplus income, which is derived from the 
fees of visitors, to add to their estates Anne Hath- 
away's Cottage at Shottery, a third building of high 
interest to students of Shakespeare's history. 

The formation of the Birthplace Trust has every 
title to be regarded as an outward and visible tribute 
to Shakespeare's memory on the part of the British 



224 COMMEMORATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

nation at large. ^ The purchase for the pubhc of the 
Birthplace, the New Place property, and Anne 
Hathaway's Cottage was not primarily due to local 
effort. Justly enough, a very small portion of the 
necessary funds came from Stratford itself. The 
British nation may therefore take credit for having 
set up at least one fitting monument to Shakespeare 
by consecrating to public uses the property identified 
with his career in Stratford. Larger funds than 
the trustees at present possess are required to enable 
them to carry on the work which their predecessors 
began, and to compete with any chance of success 
for books and relics of Shakespearean interest — 
such as they are empowered by Act of Parliament 
to acquire — when these memorials chance to come 
into the market. But a number of small annual 
subscriptions from men of letters has lately f acihtated 
the performance of this part of the trustees' work, 
and that source of income may, it is hoped, increase. 
At any rate, the ancient objection to the erection 

^ Nor is this all that has been accomplished at Stratford in the 
nineteenth century in the way of the national commemoration of 
Shakespeare. While the surviving property of Shakespearean 
interest was in course of acquisition for the nation, an early am- 
bition to erect in Stratford a theatre in Shakespeare's memory 
was realised — in part by subscriptions from the general public, 
but mainly by the mxmificence of members of the Flower family, 
three generations of which have resided at Stratford. The 
Memorial Theatre was opened in 1879, and the Picture Gallery 
and Library which were attached to it were completed two years 
later. The Memorial Buildings at Stratford stand on a different 
footing from the properties of the Birthplace Trust. The Memo- 
rial institution has an independent government, and is to a larger 
extent under local control. But the extended series of perform- 
ances of Shakespearean drama, which takes place each year in 
April at the Memorial Theatre, has something of the character 
of an annual commemoration of Shakespeare by the nation at 
large. 



THE NATIONAL MEMORIAL AT STRATFORD 225 

of a national monument in London, which was based 
on the absence of any memorial in Stratford, is no 
longer of avail. In 1821, in 1847, and in 1864, when 
the acquisition of the Stratford property was im- 
attempted or uncompleted, it was perfectly just to 
argue that Stratford was entitled to have precedence 
of London when the question of commemorating 
Shakespeare was debated. It is no just argument 
in 1906, now that the claims of Stratford are prac- 
tically satisfied. 

Byron, when writing of the memorial to Petrarch 
at Arqua, expressed with admirable feehng the senti- 
ment that would confine outward memorials of a 
poet in his native town to the places where he was 
born, hved, died, and was buried. With very Httle 
verbal change Byron's stanza on the visible memor- 
ials of Petrarch's association with Arqua is applicable 
to those of Shakespeare's connexion with Stratford : — 

They keep his dust in Stratford, where he died; 

The midland village where his later days 

Went down the vale of years; and 'tis their pride— 

An honest pride — and let it be their praise. 

To offer to the passing stranger's gaze 

His birthplace and his sepulchre; both plain 

And venerably simple, such as raise 

A feeling more accordant with his strain 

Than if a pyramid form'd his monumental fane.*^ 

Venerable simplicity is hardly the characteristic 
note of Shakespeare's '^ strain" any more than it is 
of Petrarch's ^'strain." But there can be no just 
quarrel with the general contention that at Strat- 
ford, where Shakespeare gave ample proof of his 
characteristic modesty, a pyramidal fane would be 
out of harmony with the environment. There his 

1 Cf. Childe Harold, Canto IV., St. xxxi. 



226 COMMEMORATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

birthplace, his garden, and tomb are the fittest 
memorials of his great career. 



It may justly be asked: Is there any principle 
which justifies another sort of memorial elsewhere? 
On grounds of history and sentiment, but in con- 
ditions which demand most careful definition, the 
right answer will, I think, be in the affirmative. For 
one thing, Shakespeare's life was not confined to 
Stratford. His professional career was spent in 
London, and those, who strictly insist that memorials 
to great men should be erected only in places with 
which they were personally associated, can hardly 
deny that London shares with Stratford a title to 
a memorial from a biographical or historical point 
of view. Of Shakespeare's life of fifty-two years, 
twenty-four years were in all probabihty spent in 
London. During those years the work that makes 
him memorable was done. It was in London that 
the fame which is universally acknowledged was 
won. 

Some valuable details regarding Shakespeare's 
life in London are accessible. The districts where he 
resided and where he passed his days are known. 
There is evidence that during the early part of his 
London career he lived in the parish of St Helen's, 
Bishopsgate, and during the later part near the Bank- 
side, Southwark. With the south side of the Thames 
he was long connected, together with his youngest 
brother, Edmund, who was also an actor, and who 
was buried in the church of St Saviour's, Southwark. 

In his early London days Shakespeare's profes- 



SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE IN LONDON 227 

sional work, alike as actor and dramatist, brought 
him daily from St Helen's, Bishopsgate, to The 
Theatre in Shoreditch. Shoreditch was then the 
chief theatrical quarter in London. Later, the cen- 
tre of London theatrical life shifted to Southwark, 
where the far-famed Globe Theatre was erected, 
in 1599, mainly out of the materials of the dis- 
mantled Shoreditch Theatre. Ultimately Shake- 
speare's company of actors performed in a theatre 
at Blackfriars, which was created out of a private 
residence on a part of the site on which The Times 
office stands now. At a few hundred yards' distance 
from the Blackfriars Theatre, in the direction of 
Cannon Street, Shakespeare, too, shortly before his 
death, purchased a house. 

Thus Shakespeare's life in London is well iden- 
tified with four districts — with Bishopsgate, with 
Shoreditch, with Southwark, and with Blackfriars. 
Unhappily for students of Shakespeare's life, London 
has been more than once remodelled since the dram- 
atist sojourned in the city. The buildings and lodg- 
ings, with which he was associated in Shoreditch, 
Southwark, Bishopsgate, or Blackfriars, have long 
since disappeared. 

It is not practicable to follow in London the same 
historical scheme of commemoration which has been 
adopted at Stratford-on-Avon. It is impossible to 
recall to existence the edifices in which Shakespeare 
pursued his London career. Archaeology could do 
httle in this direction that was satisfactory. There 
would be an awkward incongruity in introducing into 
the serried ranks of Shoreditch warehouses and 
Southwark wharves an archaeological restoration of 
Ehzabethan playhouse or private residence. Pictorial 



228 COMMEMORATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

representations of the Globe Theatre survive, and 
it might be possible to construct something that 
should materialise the extant drawings. But the 
genius loci has fled from Southwark and from Shore- 
ditch. It might be practicable to set up a new 
model of an Elizabethan theatre elsewhere in London, 
but such a memorial would have about it an air of 
unreahty, artificiality, and affectation which would 
not be in accord with the scholarly spirit of an his- 
toric or biographic commemoration. The device 
might prove of archaeological interest, but the com- 
memorative purpose, from a biographical or histor- 
ical point of view, would be ill served. Wherever 
a copy of an EUzabethan playhouse were brought 
to birth in twentieth-century London, the historic 
sense in the onlooker would be for the most part 
irresponsive; it would hardly be quickened. 



VI 

Apart from the practical difficulties of realising 
materially Shakespeare's local associations with Lon- 
don, it is doubtful if the mere commemoration in 
London of Shakespeare's personal connexion with 
the great city ought to be the precise aim of those 
who urge the propriety of erecting a national monu- 
ment in the metropolis. Shakespeare's personal re- 
lations with London can in all the circumstances of 
the case be treated as a justification in only the second 
degree. The primary justification involves a some- 
what different train of thought. A national memorial 
of Shakespeare in London must be reckoned of small 
account if it merely aim at keeping alive in public 



SHAKESPEARE'S PLACE IN THE WORLD 229 

memory episodes of Shakespeare's London career. 
The true aim of a national London memorial must 
be symbolical of a larger fact. It must typify Shake- 
speare's place not in the past, but in the present life of 
the nation and of the world. It ought to constitute a 
perpetual reminder of the position that he fills in the 
present economy, and is likely to fill in the future 
economy of human thought, for those whose growing 
absorption in the narrowing business of life tends to 
make them forget it. 

The day is long since past when vague eulogy of 
Shakespeare is permissible. Shakespeare's literary 
supremacy is as fully recognised by those who justly 
appreciate literature as any law of nature. To the 
man and woman of culture in all civilised countries 
he s)niibolises the potency of the human intellect. 
But those who are content to read and admire him 
in the cloister at times overlook the full significance 
of his achievement in the outer world. Critics of 
all nationalities are in substantial agreement with 
the romance-writer Dumas, who pointed out that 
Shakespeare is more than the greatest of dramatists; 
he is the greatest of thinking men. 

The exalted foreign estimate illustrates the fact 
that Shakespeare contributes to the prestige of his 
nation a good deal beyond repute for Hterary power. 
He is not merely a literary ornament of our British 
household. It is largely on his account that foreign 
nations honour his country as an intellectual and 
spiritual force. Shakespeare and Newton together 
give England an intellectual sovereignty which adds 
more to her ''reputation through the world" than 
any exploit in battle or statesmanship. If, again, 
Shakespeare's pre-eminence has added dignity to the 



230 COMMEMORATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

name of Englishman abroad, it has also quickened 
the sense of unity among the intelligent sections of 
the English-speaking peoples. Admiration, affec- 
tion for his work has come to be one of the strongest 
hnks in the chain which binds the EngUsh-speaking 
peoples together. He quickens the fraternal sense 
among all who speak his language. 

London is no nominal capital of the kingdom and 
the Empire. It is the headquarters of British in- 
fluence. Within its boundaries are assembled the 
official insignia of British prestige. It is the mother- 
city of the EngHsh-speaking world. To ask of the 
citizens of London some outward sign that Shake- 
speare is a hving source of British prestige, an unify- 
ing factor in the consolidation of the British Empire, 
and a powerful element in the maintenance of frater- 
nal relations with the United States, seems therefore 
no unreasonable demand. Neither cloistered study 
of his plays, nor the occasional representation of 
them in the theatres, brings home to either the 
English-speaking or the EngHsh-reading world the 
full extent of the debt that England owes to Shake- 
speare. A monumental memorial, which should 
symboUse Shakespeare's influence in the universe, 
could only find an appropriate and effective home in 
the capital city of the British Empire. It is this 
conviction, and no narrower point of view, which 
gives endeavour to commemorate Shakespeare in 
London its title to consideration. 



VII 

The admitted fact that Shakespeare's fame is 
established beyond risk of decay does not place him 



MILTON'S ELEGY 231 

outside the range of conventional methods of com- 
memoration. The greater a man's recognised ser- 
vice to his fellows, the more active grows in normally 
constituted minds that natural commemorative in- 
stinct, which seeks outward and tangible expression. 
A strange fallacy underlies the objection that has 
been taken to any commemoration of Shakespeare 
on the alleged ground that Milton warned the English 
people of all time against erecting a monument to 
Shakespeare. 

In 1630 Milton asked the question that is familiar 
to thousands of tongues: 

What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones ? 

By way of answer he deprecated any such "weak 
witness of his name" as "piled stones" or "star-y- 
pointing pyramid." The poet-laureate of England 
echoed Milton's sentiment in 1905. He roundly 
asserted that "perishable stuff" is the fit crown of 
monumental pedestals. "Gods for themselves," he 
concluded, "have monument enough." 

There are ample signs that the sentiment to 
which Milton and the laureate give voice has a good 
deal of public support. None the less the poet- 
laureate's conclusion is clearly refuted by experience 
and cannot terminate the argument. At any rate, 
in the classical and Renaissance eras monumental 
sculpture was in habitual request among those who 
would honour both immortal gods and mortal heroes 
— especially mortal heroes who had distinguished 
themselves in literature or art. 

A little reflection will show, likewise, that Milton's 
fervid couplets have small bearing on the question 
at issue in its present conditions. Milton's poem 



232 COMMEMORATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

is an elegy on Shakespeare. It was penned when 
the dramatist had lain in his grave less than fourteen 
years, and when the writer was in his twenty-second 
year. The exuberant enthusiasm of youth was 
couched in poetic imagery which has from time 
immemorial been employed in panegyrics of great 
poets. The beautiful figure which presents a great 
man's work as his only lasting monument is as 
old as poetry itself. The conceit courses through 
the classical poetry of Greece from the time of 
Pindar, and through that of Italy from the time 
of Ennius. No great Renaissance writer of modern 
Italy, of sixteenth-century France, or of EHzabethan 
England, tired of arguing that the poet's deathless 
memorial is that carved by his own pen. Shake- 
speare himself clothed the conceit in glowing har- 
monies in his sonnets. Ben Jonson, in his elegy on 
the dramatist, adapted the time-honoured figure 
when he hailed his dead friend's achievement as ''a 
monument without a tomb." 

''The truest poetry is the most feigning," and, 
when one recalls the true significance and influence 
of great sculptured monuments through the history 
of the civiHsed world, Milton's poetic argument 
can only be accepted in what Sir Thomas Browne 
called ''a soft and flexible sense"; it cannot ''be 
called unto the rigid test of reason." To treat 
Milton's eulogy as the final word in the discussion 
of the subject whether or no Shakespeare should 
have a national monument, is to come into conflict 
with Sir Walter Scott, Tennyson, Ruskin, Dickens, 
and all the greatest men of letters of the nineteenth 
century, who answered the question in the affirma- 
tive. It is to discredit crowds of admirers of great 



MONUMENTS TO CLASSICAL POETS 233 

writers in classical and modern ages, who have com- 
memorated the labours of poets and dramatists in 
outward and visible monuments. 

The genius of the great Greek dramatists was 
not underrated by their countrymen. Their literary 
efforts were adjudged to be true memorials of their 
fame, and no doubt of their immortality was enter- 
tained. None the less, the city of Athens, on the 
proposition of the Attic orator, Lycurgus, erected in 
honour of ^Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides statues 
which ranked with the most beautiful adornments 
of the Greek capital. Calderon and Goethe, Camo- 
ens and Schiller, Sir Walter Scott and Burns enjoy 
reputations which are smaller, it is true, than 
Shakespeare's, but are, at the same time, like his, 
of both national and universal significance. In 
memory of them all, monuments have been erected 
as tokens of their fellow-countrymen's veneration 
and gratitude for the influence which their poetry 
wields. 

The fame of these men's writings never stood 
in any ''need" of monumental corroboration. The 
sculptured memorial testified to the sense of gratitude 
which their writings generated in the hearts and 
minds of their readers. 

Again, the great musicians and the great painters 
live in their work in a singularly vivid sense. Music 
and painting are more direct in popular appeal than 
great poetry. Yet none can ridicule the sentiment 
which is embodied in the statue of Beethoven at 
Bonn, or in that of Paolo Veronese at Verona. To 
accept literally the youthful judgment of Milton and 
his imitators is to condemn sentiments and practices 
which are in universal vogue among civiUsed peoples. 



234 COMMEMORATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

It is to deny to the Poets' Corner in Westminster 
Abbey a rational title to existence. 

To conunemorate a great man by a statue in a 
public place in the central sphere of his influence is, 
indeed, a custom inseparable from civilised life. The 
theoretic moralist's reminder that monuments of 
human greatness sooner or later come to dust is a 
doctrine too discouraging of all human effort to 
exert much practical effect. Monuments are, in the 
eyes of the intelhgent, tributes for services rendered 
by great men to posterity. But incidentally they 
have an educational value. They help to fix the 
attention of the thoughtless on facts which may, 
in the absence of outward symbols, escape notice. 
They may act as incentives to thought. They may 
convert the thoughtless into the thoughtful. Wide 
as are the ranks of Shakespeare's readers, they are 
not, in England at any rate, incapable of extension; 
and, whatever is Ukely to call the attention of those 
who are as yet outside the pale of knowledge of 
Shakespeare to what lies within it, deserves respect- 
ful consideration. 

It is never inconsistent with a nation's dignity 
for it to give conspicuous expression of gratitude 
to its benefactors, among whom great writers take 
first rank. Monuments of fitting character give 
that conspicuous expression. Bacon, the most en- 
Hghtened of English thinkers, argued, within a few 
years of Shakespeare's death, that no self-respect- 
ing people could safely onut to erect statues of 
those who had contributed to the genuine advance 
of their knowledge or prestige. The visitors to 
Bacon's imaginary island of New Atlantis saw 
statues erected at the public expense in memory 



SYMBOLISATION OF SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS 235 

of all who had won great distinction in the arts 
or sciences. The richness of the memorial varied 
according to the value of the achievement. ''These 
statues," the observer noted, ''are some of brass, 
some of marble and touchstone, some of cedar 
and other special woods, gilt and adorned, some 
of iron, some of silver, some of gold." No other 
external recognition of great intellectual service was 
deemed, in Bacon's Utopia, of equal appropriateness. 
Bacon's mature judgment deserves greater regard 
than the splendid imagery of Milton's budding 
muse. 

VIII 

In order to satisfy the commemorative instinct 
in a people, it is necessary, as Bacon pointed out, 
strictly to adapt the means to the end. The essential 
object of a national monument to a great man is 
to pay tribute to his greatness, to express his fellow- 
men's sense of his service. No blunder could be 
graver than to confuse the issue by seeking to make 
the commemoration serve any secondary or collateral 
purpose. It may be very useful to erect hospitals 
or schools. It may help in the dissemination of 
knowledge and appreciation of Shakespearean drama 
for the public to endow a theatre, which should be 
devoted to the performance of Shakespeare's plays. 
The public interest calls loudly for a playhouse that 
shall be under public control. Promoters of such 
a commendable endeavour might find their labours 
facilitated by associating their project with Shake- 
speare's name — with the proposed commemoration 
of Shakespeare. But the true aim of the com- 
memoration will be frustrated if it be linked with 



236 COMMEMORATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

any purpose of utility, however commendable, with 
anything beyond a symbolisation of Shakespeare's 
mighty genius and influence. To attempt aught else 
is ''wrenching the true cause the false way." A 
worthy memorial to Shakespeare will not satisfy the 
just working of the commemorative instinct, unless 
it take the sculpturesque and monumental shape 
which the great tradition of antiquity has sanctioned. 
A monument to Shakespeare should be a monument 
and nothing besides. 

Bacon's doctrine that the greater the achieve- 
ment that is commemorated the richer must be the 
outward symbol, implies that a memorial to Shake- 
speare must be a work of art of the loftiest merit 
conceivable. Unless those who promote the move- 
ment concentrate their energies on an object of 
beauty, unless they free the movement of all suspicion 
that the satisfaction of the commemorative instinct 
is to be a secondary and not the primary aim, un- 
less they resolve that the Shakespeare memorial in 
London is to be a monument pure and simple, and 
one as perfect as art can make it, then the effort is 
undeserving of national support. 

IX 

This conclusion suggests the inevitable objection 
that sculpture in England is not in a condition favour- 
able to the execution of a great piece of monumental 
art. Past experience in London does not make one 
very sanguine that it is possible to realise in statuary 
a worthy conception of a Shakespearean memorial. 
The various stages through which recent efforts to 
promote sculptured memorials in London have passed 



LONDON STATUES 237 

suggest the mock turtle's definition in Alice in Won- 
derland of the four branches of arithmetic — Ambition, 
Distraction, UgHfication, and Derision. Save the 
old statue of James the Second, at Whitehall, and the 
new statue of Oliver Cromwell, which stands at a 
disadvantage on its present site beneath Westminster 
Hall, there is scarcely a sculptured portrait in the 
pubhc places of London which is not 

A fix^d figure for the time of scorn 
To point his slow immoving finger at. 

London does not lack statues of men of letters. 
There are statues of Burns and John Stuart Mill on 
the Thames Embankment, of Byron in Hamilton 
Place, and of Carlyle on Chelsea Embankment. But 
all convey an impression of insignificance, and thereby 
fail to satisfy the nation's commemorative instinct. 

The taste of the British nation needs rigorous con- 
trol when it seeks to pay tribute to benefactors by 
means of sculptured monuments. During the last 
forty years a vast addition has been made throughout 
Great Britain — with most depressing effect — to the 
number of sculptured memorials in the open air. 
The people have certainly shown far too enthusiastic 
and too inconsiderate a Hberahty in commemorating 
by means of sculptured monuments the virtues of 
Prince Albert and the noble character and career of 
the late Queen Victoria. The deduction to be drawn 
from the numberless statues of Queen Victoria and 
her consort is not exhilarating. British taste never 
showed itself to worse effect. The general impres- 
sion produced by the most ambitious of all these 
memorials, the Albert Memorial in Kensington 
Gardens, is especially deplorable. The gilt figure of 



238 COMMEMORATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

the Prince seems to defy every principle that fine art 
should respect. The endeavour to produce imposing 
effect by dint of hugeness is, in all but inspired hands, 
certain to issue in ugHness. 

It would, however, be a mistake to take too 
gloomy a view of the situation. The prospect may 
easily be painted in too dismal colours. It is a com- 
monplace with foreign historians of art to assert that 
English sculpture ceased to flourish when the build- 
ing of the old Gothic cathedrals came to an end. 
But Stevens's monument of the Duke of Wellington 
in St. Paul's Cathedral, despite the imperfect execu- 
tion of the sculptor's design, shows that the monu- 
mental art of England has proved itself, at a recent 
date, capable of reahsing a great commemorative 
conception. There are signs, too, that at least three 
living sculptors might in favourable conditions prove 
worthy competitors of Stevens. At least one literary 
memorial in the British Isles, the Scott monument 
in Edinburgh, which cost no more than £16,000, 
satisfies a nation's commemorative aspiration. 
There the natural environment and an architectural 
setting of fine conception reinforce the effect of sculp- 
ture. The whole typifies with fitting dignity the 
admiring affection which gathers about Scott's name. 
This successful realisation of a commemorative aim — 
not wholly dissimilar from that which should inspire 
a Shakespeare memorial — must check forebodings of 
despair. 

There are obviously greater difficulties in erecting 
a monument to Shakespeare in London than in 
erecting a monument to Scott in Edinburgh. There 
is no site in London that will compare with the 
gardens of Princes Street in Edinburgh. It is 



SITES IN LONDON 239 

essential that a Shakespeare memorial should oc- 
cupy the best site that London can offer. Ideally 
the best site for any great monument is the summit 
of a gently rising eminence, with a roadway directly 
approaching it and circling round it. In 1864, 
when the question of a fit site for a Shakespeare 
memorial in London was warmly debated, a too 
ambitious scheme recommended the formation of 
an avenue on the model of the Champs-Elysees 
from the top of Portland Place across Primrose 
Hill; and at the end of the avenue, on the summit 
of Primrose Hill, at an elevation of 207 feet above 
the river Thames, the Shakespeare monument was 
to stand. This was and is an impracticable proposal. 
The site which in 1864 received the largest measure 
of approbation was a spot in the Green Park, near 
Piccadilly. A third suggestion of the same date was 
the bank of the river Thames, which was then called 
Thamesway, but was on the point of conversion into 
the Thames Embankment. Recent reconstruction 
of Central London — of the district north of the 
Strand — by the London County Council now widens 
the field of choice. There is much to be said for a 
site within the centre of London life. But an ele- 
vated monumental structure on the banks of the 
Thames seems to meet at the moment with the wid- 
est approval. In any case, no site that is mean or 
cramped would be permissible if the essential needs 
of the situation are to be met. 

A monument that should be sufficiently imposing 
would need an architectural framework. But the 
figure of the poet must occupy the foremost place 
in the design. Herein lies another embarrassment. 
It is difficult to determine which of the extant 



240 COMMEMORATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

portraits the sculptor ought to follow. The bust 
in Stratford Church, the print in the First Folio, 
and possibly the Chandos painting in the National 
Portrait Gallery, are honest efforts to present a 
faithful likeness. But they are crudely executed, 
and are posthumous sketches largely depending 
on the artist's memory. The sculptor would be 
compelled to work in the spirit of the historian, 
who recreates a past event from the indication 
given him by an illiterate or fragmentary chronicle 
or inscription. He would be bound to endow with 
artistic life those features in which the authentic 
portraits agree, but the highest effort of the imagina- 
tion would be needed to create an impression of 
artistic truth. 

The success of a Shakespeare memorial will 
ultimately depend on the pecuniary support that 
the public accord it. But in the initial stage of 
the movement all rests on the discovery of a sculptor 
capable of realising the significance of a national 
commemoration of the greatest of the nation's, or 
indeed of the world's, heroes. It would be well to 
settle satisfactorily the question of such an ar- 
tist's existence before anything else. The first step 
that any organising committee of a Shakespeare 
memorial should therefore take, in my view, would 
be to invite sculptors of every country to propose 
a design. The monument should be the best that 
artistic genius could contrive — the artistic genius 
of the world. There may be better sculptors 
abroad than at home. The universality of the ap- 
peal which Shakespeare's achievement makes, just- 
ifies a competition among artists of every race or 
nationality. 



A TRIBUTE OF PERSONAL DEVOTION 241 

The crucial decision as to whether the capacity 
to execute the monument is available, should be 
entrusted to a committee of taste, to a committee of 
liberal-minded connoisseurs who command general 
confidence. If this jury decide by their verdict that 
the present conditions of art permit the production 
of a great memorial of Shakespeare on just principles, 
then a strenuous appeal for funds may be inaugu- 
rated with Ukelihood of success. It is hopeless to 
reverse these methods of procedure. If funds are 
first invited before rational doubts as to the pos- 
sibility of a proper application of them are dispelled, 
it is improbable that the response will be satis- 
factory or that the issue of the movement of 1905 
will differ from that of 1821 or 1864. 

In 1864 Victor Hugo expressed the opinion that 
the expenses of a Shakespeare memorial in London 
ought to be defrayed by the British Government. 
There is small likelihood of assistance from that 
source. Individual effort can alone be relied upon; 
and it is doubtful if it be desirable to seek official 
aid. A great national memorial of Shakespeare 
in London, if it come into being at all on the lines 
which would alone justify its existence, ought to 
embody individual enthusiasm, ought to express 
with fitting dignity the personal sense of indebted- 
ness and admiration which fills the hearts of his 
fellow-men. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Acting, importance of, in Shake- 
spearean drama, 13; evil effects 
of long runs, 14; Shake- 
speare on, 45, 47. 

Actor-manager, his merits and de- 
fects, 125, 126. 

Actors, training of, 139; English, 
in France, 203. See also Ben- 
son, Mr. F. R., and Boys. 

^schylus, statue of, 233. 

Albert, Prince (consort), and 
Shakespeare's birthplace, 222 ; 
statues of, 237, 238. 

Alleyn, Edward, 191, 194. 

Annual Register of 1770, 194. 

Aristotle, Shakespeare's mention 
of, 144, 145; Bacon's study of, 
145. 

Arnold, Matthew, on Shakespeare, 
29. 

Astronomy, Shakespeare on, 146. 

Athens, statuary at, 233. 

Aubrey, John, his gossip of Shake- 
speare, 66, 67. 

Austria, subsidised theatres in, 
131, 136. 

Bacon, Anthony, in France, 203. 
Bacon, Francis, philosophical 

method of, 143; on memorial 

monuments in "NetJO Atlantis, 

234, 235. 
Bacon, Sir Nicholas, his fame in 

France, 204. 
Badger, Mr. Richard, proposal for 

a Shakespeare monument, 219. 
Bannister, music for The Tempest, 

106, 107. 
Barker, Mr. Granville, as Richard 

II., 13 n. 



Basse, William, his tribute to 
Shakespeare, 50. 

Beeston, Christopher, Elizabethan 
actor, 64. 

Beeston, William the first, patron 
of Nash, 63, 64 ; second, his the- 
atrical career, 65, 06; his gos- 
sip about Shakespeare, 65; his 
conversation, 66; Aubrey's ac- 
count of, 67. 

Beethoven, statue of, 233. 

Beljame, M. Alexandre, on Eng- 
lish literature, 201 ; death of, 
201. 

Benson, Mr. F. R., his company of 
actors. 111; his principles, 112 
seq. ; list of Shakespearean plays 
produced by, 114, 115 «. ; his 
production of Hamlet una- 
bridged, 116-18; his training of 
actors, 119; his services to 
Shakespeare, 121; his pupils on 
the London stage, 130. 

Berkenhout, John, 195. 

Betterton, Thomas, at Stratford- 
on-Avon, 73; contributes to 
Rowe's biography, 73, 76; 
his rendering of Hamlet, 101, 
102. 

Biography, art of, in England, 
51 seq. 

Bishop, Sir William, 76. 

Bishopsgate ( London ) , Shake- 
speare at, 226, 227. 

Blackfriars, Shakespeare's house 
at, 227. 

Boileau and English literature,. 
200. 

Bolingbroke (in Richard II.), pa- 
triotism of, 173, 174. 
245 



246 



INDEX 



Bowman, John, actor, 69; at 
Stratford-on-Avon, 76. 

Boys in women's parts in Eliza- 
bethan theatres, 19, 41 ; aban- 
donment of the practice, 
43; superseded by women, 88, 
89. 

Buchanan, George, his plays, 204. 

Burbage, Richard, Shakespeare's 
friend and fellow actor, 33. 

Burns, Mr. John, 131. 

Bums, Robert, French study o(, 
201 ; monument to, 233, 237. 

Byron, Lord, on Petrarch at Ar- 
qua, 225 ; statue of, 237. 

Calderon, 136, monument to, 233. 

Calvert, Charles A., his Shake- 
spearean productions at Man- 
chester, 12, 3 n. 

Camoens, monument to, 233. 

Capital and the literary drama, 
124-28. 

Carlyle, Thomas, statue of, 237. 

Catiline's Conspiracy, by Ben Jon- 
son, 31. 

Ceremony, Shakespeare on, 157, 
158. 

Chantrey, Sir Francis, and com- 
memoration of Shakespeare, 215. 

Charlecote, Shakespeare's esca- 
pade at, 76. 

Chaucer, Geoffrey, French influ- 
ence on, 199. 

Clarendon, Lord, on Shakespeare, 
79. 

" Cockpit," Drury Lane, 65, 86 ; 
Whitehall, 87 and n. 

Coleman, John, on the subsidised 
theatre, 132. 

Coleridge, S. T., and commemora- 
tion of Shakespeare, 215. 

Congreve, William, 91. 

Coriolanus and the patriotic in- 
stinct, 178, 179. 

Cromwell, Oliver, statue of, 
237. 



Davenant, Robert, Sir William's 
brother, 70. 

D'Avenant, Sir William, theatri- 
cal manager, 67; his youth at 
Oxford, 69 ; relations in boyhood 
with Shakespeare, 70; elegy on 
Shakespeare, 71 ; champion of 
Shakespeare's fame, 7 1 ; his 
story of Shakespeare and South- 
ampton, 72; his influence on 
Betterton, 72 ; manager of the 
Duke's company, 87 n. ; as dram- 
atist, 98; his adaptations of 
Shakespeare, 103-05, 106 n., 
108. 

Deschamps, Eustace, on Chauoer, 
199. 

Desportes, Philippe, and Eliza- 
bethan poetry, 199. 

D'Israeli, Isaac, on Steevens's for- 
gery, 195. 

Downes, John, prompter and stage 
annalist, 63. 

Dramatic societies in England, 
129. 

Dress, Shakespeare on extrava- 
gant, 185. 

Drimkenness, Shakespeare on, 185. 

Dryden, John, on William Bee- 
ston, 66; as dramatist, 91; his 
share in the adaptation of The 
Tempest, 105. 

DuBellay, Joachim, and Eliza- 
bethan poetry, 199. 

Ducis, Jean Frangois, his trans- 
lation of Shakespeare, 207, 
208. 

Dugdale, Sir William, 74. 

Dumas pire, on Shakespeare, 206; 
his translation of Hamlet, 209- 
11. 

Dyce, Alexander, on Steevens's for- 
gery, 196, 197. 

Elizabeth, Queen, summons Shake- 
speare to Greenwich, 31. 
Elizabethan stage society, 13 n. 



INDEX 



247 



England, Shakespeare on history 
of, 180. 

Ennius on poetic fame, 232. 

Etherege, Sir George, 91. 

Eton College, debate about Shake- 
speare at, 78. 

Euripides, statue of, 233. 

Evelyn, John, on Hamlet, 90. 

Farquhar, George, 91. 

Faulconbridge (in King John), 
patriotism of, 174. 

Fletcher, John, his Custom of the 
Country, 92, 93; its obscenity, 
93. 

Folio, The First [of Shakespeare's 
Plays], actors' cooperation in, 
59 ; list of actors in, 61. 

Folio, The Third [of Shakespeare's 
Plays], purchased by Pepys, 94. 

Folio, The Fourth [of Shake- 
speare's Plays], in Pepysian Li- 
brary, 94. 

France, subsidised theatres in, 
131, 134; Shakespeare in, 198 
seq. ; English actors in, 203. 

Freedom of the will, Shakespeare 
on, 166. 

Fuller, Thomas, his Worthies of 
England, 52; notice of Shake- 
speare, 52. 

Garrick, David, his stage costume, 
19. 

Gentleman's Magazine of 1801, 
195. 

George IV. and commemoration of 
Shakespeare, 215. 

German drama, 129, 135, 136. 

Germany, subsidised theatres in, 
131, i34. 

Goethe, 136; monument to, 233. 

Greene, Robert, French transla- 
tion of romance by, 199. 

Grendon, tradition of Shakespeare 
at, 77. 



" Grenovicus," contributor to Oen- 
tleman's Magazine, 195. 

Hales, John, of Eton, 78. 

Hall, Bp. Joseph, French transla- 
tion of works by, 199. 

Hart, Charles, actor and Shake- 
speare's grand nephew, 59, 68. 

Hauptmann, 135. 

Henry V. on kingly ceremony, 157 ; 
patriotism of, 175, 182. 

Heywood, Thomas, projected Lives 
of the Poets, 54 n. ; his affection 
for Shakespeare, 65 ; his Apol- 
ogy for Actors, 65. 

History plays of Shakespeare, 
character of, 180. 

Hobbes, Thomas, in France, 200. 

Howe, Josias, on a Shakespeare 
tradition, 77. 

Hugo, Victor, on Shakespeare, 
206. 

Imagination in the audience, 22, 

47, 48. 
Ingres, Jean, his painting of 

Shakespeare, 206. 
Irving, Sir Henry, experience of 

Shakespearean spectacle, 10 ; 

and the literary drama, 123; 

and the mimicipal theatre, 132; 

and French drama, 200. 
Irving, Washington, and commem- 
oration of Shakespeare, 215. 

James I., his alleged letter to 
Shakespeare, 72. 

James II., statue of, 237. 

John of Gaunt (in Richard II.), 
dying speech of, 115-16, 181. 

Johnson, Dr., on false patriots, 
171. 

Jonson, Ben, testimony to Shake- 
speare's popularity, 29; his 
classical tragedies compared 
with Shakespeare's, 30 ; his 
elegy on Shakespeare, 50, 232; 



248 



INDEX 



his dialectical powers contrasted 
with Shakespeare's, 53; on the 
players' praise of Shakespeare, 
60; his son Shakespeare's god- 
son, 61 ; Beeston's talk of, 67 ; 
popularity of his plays at the 
Restoration, 91, 92. 
Jusserand, M. Jules, on English 
literature, 202; his Shakespeare 
in France, 203. 

Kean, Charles, experience of 
Shakespearean spectacle, 9; Ma- 
cready's criticism of, 14. 

Kemp, William, Elizabethan come- 
dian, 33. 

Killigrew, Tom, manager of the 
King's company, 87 n. 

Kingship, Shakespeare on, 155- 
60, 180-82. 

Kirkman, Francis, his account of 
William Beeston the second, 66. 

Lacy, John, actor, 67 ; acquaint- 
ance with Ben Jonson, 68; 
adaptation of TJie Taming of 
the Shrew, 108. 

Lawrence, Sir Thomas, and com- 
memoration of Shakespeare, 
215. 

Leasing, 136. 

Lincoln's Inn Fields (Portugal 
Row), Theatre of, 86, 87 and n. 

Literary drama on the modern 
stage, 123 ; antagonism of cap- 
ital to, 126-28. 

Lives of the Poets of the seven- 
teenth century, 54 and n. 

Locke, John, in France, 200. 

Locke, Matthew, Shakespearean 
music of, 105, 108. 

Logic, Shakespeare on, 146. 

London, Shakespeare's association 
with, 226 seq.; statues in, 236, 
237; proposed sites for Shake- 
speare monument, 239. 



London County Council and the 
theatre, 130, 131; and subsi- 
dised enlightenment, 133; and 
Shakespeare monument, 219. 

London Trades Coimcil and the 
theatre, 132. 

Lowin, John, original actor in 
Shakespeare's plays, 61 ; coached 
by Shakespeare in part of Ham- 
let, 63, 71, 73. 

Lycurgus, Attic orator, 233. 

Maeready, W. C, his criticism of 
spectacle, 14. 

Marlowe, Christopher, Shake- 
peare's senior by two months, 
37, 193. 

Massinger, Philip, his Bondman, 
92, 93. 

Mathews, Charles, on a monu- 
ment of Shakespeare, 214. 

Metaphysics, Shakespeare on, 146- 
48. 

Mill, John Stuart, statue of, 237. 

Milton, his elegy on Shakespeare, 
51, 231. 

Moliere, accepted methods of pro- 
ducing his plays, 16. 

Montaigne, Michel de, and An- 
thony Bacon, 203 ; his essays in 
English, 204. 

Moore, Thomas, and commemora- 
tion of Shakespeare, 215. 

More, Sir Thomas, his Utopia in 
France, 204. 

Municipal theatre, its justifica- 
tion, 122; in Europe, 134. 

Musset, Alfred de, on Shakespeare, 
206. 

Nash, John, and commemoration 

of Shakespeare, 215. 
Nash, Thomas, 64. 
Nodier, Charles, his Persies de 

Shakespeare, 211-13. 
Norwegian drama, 129. 



INDEX 



249 



Obedience, the duty of, 161. 

Oldys, William, antiquary, 68, 69. 

Opera in England, 131. 

Oxford, the Crown Inn at, 69; 
Shakespeare at, 70; visitors 
from, to Stratford, 75-77. 

Patriotism, Shakespeare on, 170 
seq. 

Peele, George, alleged letter of, 
189 seq. 

Pepys, Samuel, his playgoing ex- 
periences, 82-87 ; on Eliza- 
bethan and Jacobean drama, 
91-93; on Shakespeare, 94 seq.; 
his attitude to poetic drama, 95, 
96 ; his musical setting of " To 
be or not to be," 100. 

Petrarch, his tomb at Arqui, 225. 

Phelps, Samuel, at Sadler's Wells, 
11; his mode of producing 
Shakespeare, 12; on a state 
theatre in London, 120 ; on pub- 
lic control of theatres, 140, 141. 

Philosophy, Shakespeare's atti- 
tude to, 142 seq. 

Pindar, on poetic fame, 232. 

Platter, Thomas, journal of his 
London visit (1599), 38. 

Playhouses in London, " Black- 
friars," 227; Drury Lane, 86, 
87, and n.; the "Globe," 227; 
the "Red Bull," 86; Sadler's 
Wells, 1 1 ; Salisbury Court, 
Whitefriars, 66, 86; "The 
Theatre " at Shoreditch, 37, 227. 

Pope, Alexander, and French lit- 
erature, 199; on the Shake- 
speare cenotaph, 216. 

Eichardson Samuel, in France, 
200. 

Robinson, Richard, actor, 68. 

Ronsard, Pierre de, and Eliza- 
bethan poetry, 199; in England, 
203. 



Rousseau, J. J., and English lit- 
erature, 200. 

Rowe, Nicholas, Shakespeare's 
first formal biographer, 54; his 
acknowledgment to Betterton, 
73; his biography of Shake- 
speare, 79, 80. 

Royal ceremony, irony of, 158. 

Russell, Lord John, on patriotism, 
172. 

Sadler's Wells Theatre, 11. 

Sand, George, on Shakespeare, 206. 

Sardou, M. Victorien, work of, 200. 

Scenery, its purpose, 5 ; useless- 
ness of realism, 23. 

Schiller, on the German stage, 136; 
monument to, 233. 

Scott, Sir Walter, and commemo- 
ration of Shakespeare, 215, 232; 
Edinburgh monument of, 238. 

Sedley, Sir Charles, 91. 

Seneca, on mercy, 153 n. 

Shadwell, Thomas, 67 ; adaptation 
of The Tempest, 106 n. 

Shakespeare, Gilbert, actor, 68. 

Shakespeare, William, his creation 
of the ghost in Hamlet, 27; eon- 
temporary popularity of, 29; 
at Court, 31 ; early London 
career, 32 ; advice to the actor, 
45 ; his modest estimate of the 
actor's powers, 47 ; elegies on 
death of, 49; Fuller's notice of, 
52; early biographies of, 54; 
oral tradition of, in seventeenth 
century, 55 ; similarity of expe- 
rience with that of contempo- 
rary dramatists and actors, 57 ; 
Elizabethan players' commenda- 
tion of, 60 ; resentment with a 
publisher, 65 ; William Bee- 
ston's reminiscences of, 67 ; 
Stratford gossip about, 74-76; 
present state of biographical 
knowledge, 81; his attitude to 
philosophy, 142 seq. ; his intui- 



250 



INDEX 



tion, 149, 150; concealment of 
his personality, 150; his private 
sentiments, 151 ; on mercy, 152, 
153; on rulers of states, 154; on 
divine right of kings, 159; on 
obedience, 161 ; on social order, 
162, 163; on freedom of the will, 
166; on women's will, 168; his 
humour and optimism, 169; 
on patriotism, 170 seq.; on Eng- 
lish history, 180; on social 
foibles, 184-86; commemoration 
of, in London, 214 seq.; por- 
traits of, 240. 
Shakespearean drama, attitude of 
students and actors to, 1 ; cost- 
liness of modern production, 2; 
the simple method and the pub- 
lic, 8; Charles Kean's spectacu- 
lar method, 9; Irving's method, 
10; plays produced by Phelps, 
11; reliance on the actor, 13; 
in Vienna, 17 ; advantage of its 
performance constantly and in 
variety, 24 ; importance of minor 
roles of, 115; its ethical signifi- 
cance, 164, 165; in France, 198 
seq.; and British prestige, 229. 
Separate Plays: 
Antony and Cleopatra at 

Vienna, 17. 
Coriolanus, political significance 

of, 164, and patriotism, 178. 
Cymbellne, HI, i, 16-22, quoted 

on patriotism, 178. 
Hamlet, Shakespeare's perform- 
ance of the ghost, 27; early 
popularity of the play, 29; 
Pepys's criticism of, 95, 99- 
101 ; the stage abridgment 
contrasted with the full text, 
117-19. 
Henry IT. (Part I), Pepys's 

criticism of, 97. 
Henry Y., meaning of first 

chorus, 19. 
Julius €a:'sar preferred to con- 



Separate Plays — Confd. 

temporary playgoers to Jon- 
son's Catiline, 31; political 
significance of, 164. 

Lear, King, performed at Eliza- 
beth's Ck)urt, 36; quarto of, 
36. 

Love's Labour's Lost performed 
at Court, 34; title-page of the 
quarto, 35. 

Maebeth, Pepys's criticism of, 
104-5. 

Measure for Measure, ethics of, 
164. 

Merry Wives of Windsor, The, 
title-page of the quarto, 36; 
Pepys's criticism of, 97. 

Midsummer Night's Dream, A, 
Pepys's criticism of, 96. 

Othello, Pepys's criticism of, 95, 
98, 99. 

Richard II., purport of John of 
Gaunt's dying speech, 115-16. 

Romeo and Juliet, Pepys's criti- 
cism of, 96. 

Tempest, The, Pepys's criticism 
of, 105-8; spectacular produc- 
tion of, at Restoration, 107. 

Troilus and Cressida, II, ii, 106, 
on Aristotle, 144, 145; I, iii, 
101-24, on social equilibrium, 
163. 

Twelfth Night, Pepys's criticism 
of, 96. 
Sheffield, John, Earl of Mulgrave 

and Duke of Buckinghamshire, 

72. 
Shoreditch, The Theatre in, 227. 
Sidney, Sir Philip, French transla- 
tions of Arcadia, 199, 204. 
Somerset, the " proud " Duke of, 

on Shakespeare, 79. 
Sophocles, statue of, 233. 
Southampton, Earl of, and Shake- 
speare, 72. 
Southwark, the Globe Theatre at, 

227. 



INDEX 



251 



Spenser, Edmund, Beeston's gossip 
of, 67. 

Steevens, George, character of, 
191 ; a forged letter by, 192, 193. 

Sterne, Laurence, in France, 200. 

Stevenson, R. L., his imaginary 
discovery of lost works by 
Shakespeare, 25. 

Stratford-ou-Avon, Shakespeare's 
tomb at, 50; Betterton at, 73; 
visitors from Oxford to, 75, 76, 
77 ; Shakespeare tradition at, 
75, 76; Shakespeare memorials 
at, 218; destruction of New 
Place, 221 ; the Monumental 
Committee of, 221; sale of 
Shakespeare's Birthplace, 222 ; 
purchase of New Place site, 
223; the Birthplace Trust, 223, 
224. 

Suckling, Sir John, his love for 
Shakespeare, 71. 

Sudermann, 135. 

Tate, Nahum, his adaptations of 
Shakespeare, 103, 104. 

Taylor, Joseph, original actor in 
Shakespeare's plays, 62; coached 
by Shakespeare in part of Henry 
VIII, 63, 71, 72. 

Theatres ' in Elizabethan London, 
36; seating arrangements, 39; 
prices of admission, 39 ; the 
scenery on the stage, 40; the 
costumes, 41 ; contrast between 
their methods of production 
and those of later date, 44; at 
Restoration, 86; characteristics 
of, 87-90. See also Playhouses. 

Theatrical Review of 1763, 190. 



Theatrical spectacle in Shake- 
spearean drama, effect of ex- 
cess, 3 ; its want of logic, 4 ; its 
costliness, 7 ; at the Restoration, 
89, 108; at the present day, 109. 

Thomson, James, French study of, 
201. 

Tuke, Sir Samuel, his Adventures 
of Five Hours, 98, 99. 

Vanbrugh, Sir John, 91. 

Veronese, Paolo, statue of, 233. 

Victoria, Queen, and Stratford-on- 
Avon, 222; statues of, 237. 

Vienna, production of Antony and 
Cleopatra at the Burg-Theater, 
17; types of subsidised theatres 
at, 136, 138; conservatoire of 
actors at, 139. 

Voltaire, on Shakespeare, 205, 206. 

War, popular view of, 177. 
Ward, John, vicar of Stratford-on- 

Avon, 74; his Diary, 74. 
Warner, Mrs., at Sadler's Wells, 

11. 
Wellington, Duke of, monument 

to, 238. 
Westminster Abbey, Shakespeare's 

exclusion from, 50; his ceno- 
taph in, 215-16. 
Will, freedom of, 166. 
Women, Shakespeare's views on, 

168. 
Wordsworth, William, French 

study of, 201. 
Wycherley, William, 91. 

Young, Edward, French study of, 
201. 



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